The Great Artesian Basin of Australia and Creation

The Great Artesian Basin of Australia is the largest and deepest artesian basin in the world, and the most important water supply to most of Australia. The basin covers more than 1.7 million square kilometers (660,000 square miles), up to 3,000 meters thick (9,800 feet), and is composed of a sandstone aquifer confined and covered by a marine shale sediment layer. The basin aquifer is estimated to contain 64,900 cubic kilometres (15,600 cu mi) of groundwater. The eastern edge of the basin was uplifted by tectonic forces when the Great Dividing Range formed, the third-longest land based range in the world while west of the basin is the Western Plateau of Australia. This geology produced a bowl-shaped depression that became what it is today. Australia is approximately the size of continental United States and the Great Artesian Basin is located in most of the eastern half of Australia. This sandstone layer that the aquifer is contained and the marine sediment layer on top combine to form a large-continent wide sediment deposition, something that would only be possible today as a result of a large, catastrophic deposition such as the Genesis Flood and its receding waters would produce. Creationists believe that the Flood occurred less than 5,000 years ago according to the Book of Genesis and Biblical chronology. Evolutionists believe that the sandstone layers of the Great Artesian Basin formed over 130 million years ago during the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous Periods according to standard evolutionist time scales. Evolutionists claim that continental erosion occurred after the surrounding land was uplifted and rivers and surface waters eroded sediment into the basin over millions of years. However, creationists have better explanations, proposing that a large, continental-scale deposition of sand formed the large sandstone layer of the basin during the Genesis Flood. Only a force as large and catastrophic as the Genesis Flood could have deposited such a large quantity of sediment. The overlying layers of marine shale sediment on top of the sandstone that form the confining layer were also deposited by the Genesis Flood and not over millions of years of gradual accumulation as the evolutionists propose. Many fossils have been found in the basin strata that show evidence of rapid deposition by the Flood, including diverse varieties of plant and animal fossils in addition to large coal deposits formed from the compression of the biological material between the sediment layers. Well-preserved fossil footprints of dinosaurs and other animals have been found within the rock strata as this material has been mined, giving strong evidence of rapid deposition and not gradual deposition over millions of years. Erosional landforms such as flat-topped plateaus, mesas, and buttes found in the basin give strong evidence of the receding floodwaters and refute the gradual erosion and deposition that the evolutionists propose. The continental scale of the basin sediment layers, the presence of fossils and fossil footprints, and the vast erosional features give strong evidence of the work of the Genesis Flood as the mechanism of the origin of the Great Artesian Basin, while refuting the uniformitarian assumptions and standard evolutionist doctrine.

Walker, Tas. The Great Artesian Basin, Australia. CEN Technical Journal, V. 10, no. 3, pp. 379–390, 1996.
Geoscience Australia <http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/water/groundwater/gab>