Many years ago it was claimed on a TV science show I saw that some of the water in the basin comes from Papua New Guinea (PNG) via an underground conduit.
Is it true that the Great Artesian Basin in Australia gets some of its water from PNG and how is the water transported from PNG to Australia under the Torres Strait?
The recharge areas of the Great Artesian Basin are, according to the Australian Government Department of the Environment is mainly from rainfall on the highlands (near to the western margin of the Great Dividing Range) to the east of the Basin (with some from the western margin), as shown in the image below (from the Dept webpage):
Source:after Habermehl and Lau (1997). The shaded patterns broadly represent the recharge area; arrows represent modelled flow lines after Welsh (2000). Dashed lines represent spring clusters updated from Habermehl.
One major observation is that the top of Cape York is indicated as a recharge area, however, the CSIRO report details that this is recharge area is the Coen Inlier, just to the south of the shaded are. Also noted is that there is discharge into the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north - according to the CSIRO, the basin extends into the Gulf of Carpentaria. Although in all 3 reports there is no mention of recharge through the Torres Strait, the most any such discharge could influence, is the part of the basin in the Cape York/Carpentaria area.
A cross-section of a section of the basin is show in the image below (from the Queensland Government WetlandInfo webpage, clearly modelling the recharge areas (for the most part) being from the highlands on the eastern margin of the basin:
Additional References
Habermehl MA and Lau JE 1997, Hydrogeology of the Great Artesian Basin (Map at scale 1:2500000), Australian Geological Survey Organisation, Canberra
Welsh WD 2000, GABFLOW: A steady state groundwater flow model of the Great Artesian Basin, Bureau of Rural Sciences, Canberra.