As our CRC nears the halfway mark in its 10-year term, a team of worldly-wise researchers has come on board to ensure our industry and community partners will secure lasting, meaningful impacts from some of our most critical projects.

Written by Ralph Johnstone

To say that Caroline Rosello has broad life experience is like saying that Graeme Clark is a handy inventor or that Kylie Minogue can hold a tune.

Before she joined One Basin as one of our first Impact Researchers late last year, this charming, reflective Frenchwoman had traversed continents and careers with extraordinary zeal. From investigating wound healing and angiogenesis in laboratories in France and the United States, to running a restaurant in the French Alps, to studying phosphate absorption in soils in the South Pacific, Caroline’s work has touched a range of subjects that would satisfy most people for a lifetime.

Which makes her a perfect candidate to become one of One Basin CRC’s inaugural Impact Researchers.

As it nears the halfway point of its 10-year mandate, One Basin has appointed three “boundary-spanning” post-doctoral researchers to spark new connections and conversations between its research and industry partners, in order to boost the impact of current projects and evaluate priorities for the future. Since late 2025, these seasoned scholars have joined three of One Basin’s four core R&D programs – Foresight and Decisions, Technology and Opportunity, and First Nations Research – with a fourth expected to join its Adaptation and Innovation program later this year.

Caroline’s current work focuses on helping people prepare for what water scientists call “deep uncertainty” – a state where the future is so uncertain, conditions so changeable, that completely new tools are required to help communities and water managers plan for the years ahead. Since completing her PhD in adaptive water planning at ANU, Caroline has worked across a broad variety of modelling processes, scenario thinking, stakeholder engagement, and decision-support tools. Now, at One Basin, she’s working with University of Adelaide hydrologist Michael Leonard to develop a regional modelling and visualisation platform for the Lower Murray – focusing on how perennial irrigation demands could interact with water availability, allocation processes, and system constraints into the future.

“Caroline’s a real go-getter who can take something on the fringe of her understanding and quickly come to own it,” says Michael. “She’d just started working in water management when we were plunging her into complex GIS mapping – processing, analysing and manipulating terabytes of satellite data. But because she has this incredible versatility and reflectiveness, and she really listens to people, she has a great ability to explain how a complex model or set of data can be practically applied in someone’s world.

“It’s an incredible skill, finding examples and observations that connect really technical research with real-life situations. Plus, she works her butt off to help people really understand the purpose of what we’re doing.”

Critical connections

That purpose is the crux of why One Basin CRC has taken on the services of three veteran researchers as it advances towards the midpoint of its 10-year mission to link scientists, farmers, water authorities and communities in finding novel and practical ways to protect Australia’s greatest riverine system.

Prof Seth Westra, One Basin’s Research Director and head of its Technology and Opportunity Program, believes “boundary-spanning” researchers like Caroline hold a critical key to connect landholders with the research methods, models and findings that can help them develop robust and informed solutions for the Basin’s most urgent challenges.

“We need people who can work across the interfaces of academia, industry and government where the sparks of solutions are so often born,” says Seth. “After four-and-a-half years, with over 20 projects that have come through deep co-design, and with a broader vision for the CRC, now is the right time to have researchers with this real-world experience helping us take our projects to the next level. A big part of these impact researchers’ work will be to weave together the different threads that have come from our projects, into more user-focused areas of activity and impact.”

Caroline’s work in spatial modelling, scenario thinking, and community engagement is helping translate the project’s technical components – including satellite-based land-use classification, regional water demand modelling, and scenario exploration – into outputs that different partners can use. The emerging framework will explore how irrigation demands for horticultural crops in the Lower Murray might interact with water availability, allocation processes, and climate variability under future changes that remain far from clear.

“The aim is to create a shared picture of where pressure may build in the system, and what that could mean under different conditions,” Caroline explains. “It’s not just about producing a model or a dashboard, but about helping partners explore the questions, assumptions and options that matter for preparedness and planning.”

Already, Michael and Caroline’s work has been informed by field visits across the Riverland, Lower Murray and Murrumbidgee regions, exploring how their prototype interface may support practical planning conversations with growers, industry bodies, water managers and agencies. Caroline’s role also connects with One Basin’s work in the Northern Basin, where she’s helping to co-design a project proposal that builds on engagement with CRC partners to support longer-term drought resilience and decision-making.

A longer-term mission

“While we have many projects on our books, now is the time to work out how we can maximise the benefits and impacts of these projects for the wider world.”

Prof Neville Crossman, Program Lead, Adaptation and Innovation Research Program, One Basin CRC

“At the start of the CRC, there was a lot of excitement and goodwill,” Caroline points out. “But several years into complex projects, it becomes more important to keep reconnecting with partners – showing progress, and making sure the work remains grounded in their realities.

“When Michael presented an early prototype of the interface to our partners, you could see people beginning to engage with what it might make possible. Several partners have since shared reports and practical insights that help us understand not only the technical issues, but what they’re experiencing on the ground. This kind of grounded, ongoing relationship is critical if research is going to be useful within and beyond the life of a project.”

“The technical work is only one part of impact,” adds Michael Leonard. “Caroline has been very deliberate about building trust, listening carefully, and creating space for people to shape the questions alongside us. Ultimately, this is what turns modelling into something genuinely useful.”

Confronting injustice

For Dr Julie Ballangarry, a proud Gumbaynggirr woman and 2025 Churchill Fellow, joining One Basin as an Impact Researcher is a chance to rectify what she sees as “the huge injustices” stemming from First Nations people’s lack of rights and involvement in policies that repeatedly deny them access and control to water on their own land.

Since she left her original career as a prep teacher – giving children the best possible start in Indigenous schools on Palm Island and Cape York – Julie’s become a prominent advocate for policy reform to boost her people’s rights – in particular those enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and Closing the Gap (CTG). “The problem has always been the chasm between what’s said on paper and its implementation – which in terms of CTG target 15c [on accelerating ownership and management of inland waters] has been constantly shifting and holding up any meaningful progress,” she says.

After completing a PhD in public policy at Griffith University, Julie remained there as a lecturer for 18 months before joining Charles Sturt University as its Director of First Nations Strategy and Coordination. Her rigorous research across Indigenous rights, reconciliation, and political science makes her a natural fit with One Basin, which she joined on a full-time basis in April – amazing everyone with her ability to hit the ground running.

In her first week, Julie helped finalise a submission by the CRC’s First Nations Applied Management Advisory Committee to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan Review, which calls on the Murray Darling Basin Authority to move beyond a model of “managed inclusion” towards genuine recognition of First Nations people’s rights – including real influence and authority in the institutions and processes governing water allocations, modelling, funding, and decision-making. “Without these shifts,” the report notes, “the Basin Plan will remain formally inclusive, yet substantively incomplete.”

A week later, Julie was again making waves in Canberra – this time, with a series of recommendations to the Productivity Commission’s National Water Reform Inquiry. These recommendations were based on a similar theme, to move Aboriginal peoples from stakeholders advising state and federal agencies to “inherent rights holders” wielding genuine authority in areas of water access and governance.

Decision-making power

Both reports draw strongly on Julie’s longstanding research on First Nations people’s rights under UNDRIP and the National Agreement on CTG. This not only includes the obvious water rights of communities who’ve lived in the basin for tens of thousands of years; but a deeper commitment to long-term decision-making through a statutory Aboriginal Water Governance Authority with the power to review water planning and allocation frameworks and boost control over licences and market systems.

“First Nations communities have been ‘acknowledged’ and ‘canvassed’ for years, but none of it has led to any institutional arrangements that give First Nations peoples authority over their water,” Julie points out. “The fact that we’re still calling for basic rights in 2026, despite Australia’s endorsement of UNDRIP and the CTG targets, reflects a massive failure… and total disregard for First Nations people’s rights and responsibilities in relation to water.”

Over the coming months, Julie will be supporting One Basin’s First Nations team to expand its research and project work at several critical confluences of water policy – examining the evolution of Indigenous water rights, the interests and influences of different policy networks, the perceptions of key actors towards Indigenous rights – to better understand how First Nations peoples can influence policy reform.

“So often people see things as a zero-sum game, but progress requires a more levelled approach, and more grassroots understanding, to find ways for people to work together,” says Julie. “People think that Aboriginal people want to take away their rights – but if you take a closer look, you’ll see that we’re not a threat. Thriving waterways and safe drinking water are critical for everyone’s future. Water instability has knock-on effects for unemployment, health and wellbeing, education, gender inequality, domestic violence, everything… We all need to think about our future generations – not just the next political cycle or how it’s going to hit people’s pockets.”

Prof Troy Meston, One Basin’s First Nations Lead, who worked closely with Julie at Griffith University, holds both her knowledge and negotiation skills in high esteem. “Julie’s strength is the fact that she’s a wonderful communicator and a warm human being. In difficult conversations, she has this authority about her but is also incredibly disarming – so she can talk people into considering things that may have been quite anathemic to them. I think she’s going to be very important to our strategic leadership work. She’s highly ethical and professional, but she also has this rare ability to create space in which people can be themselves and express themselves.”

A distinctive perspective

Another rare combination of abilities is hard at work in Mildura, where User Experience (UX) specialist Dr Tim Dixon became One Basin’s first regionally based Impact Researcher in November.

Tim has a distinctive perspective over One Basin’s tech-focused projects, born from a decade of research for government agencies and policy think-tanks in his native UK before he landed in Australia in 2019. In the dizzying world of UX – with its natural crossovers between digital culture, psychology, accessibility, and human-centred design – Tim’s record as a researcher with UK-based agencies Fortia and Nomensa, followed by six years at software giant Atlassian, give him a unique foundation for tracking the technical and human factors that make technology succeed.

Since November, Tim’s been supporting One Basin’s Technology and Opportunity program, launching a foundational study into the kinds of regional innovation systems that can boost farmers’ adoption of the latest agricultural and water-saving technologies and help communities evaluate economic opportunities for a future with less water. His study has now transitioned to developing a framework that draws on analytical models that have helped various European regions consider the “entrepreneurial potential” of new or rejuvenated industries or services, based upon their human and natural resources – an objective that’s very close to the heart of our Digital Irrigation Advisory Systems and Future Basin Economies projects.

“By studying and modelling the innovation ecosystems within and between communities, you get an idea of how quickly they might be able to adapt to new enterprises or ways of thinking,” Tim explains. “For example, Ron Boschma’s work on regional economies successfully diversifying according to their proximate strengths is very relevant to many of our basin regions – and provides a lens for considering how One Basin’s hubs can leave a meaningful legacy in their local communities.” 

At the same time, Tim is exploring different digital platforms for foresight modelling, water usage, and other critical basin barometers, as well as developing the potential for teaching citizen science through emerging collaborations at the University of Sydney. “As a researcher, I’ve always seen myself as a bit of a jack of all trades,” he says. “So it’s quite gratifying to be involved in such a holistic way across so many disciplines, with wide-ranging but very practical applications.”

Seth Westra believes it’s vital to have this kind of cross-disciplinary thinking from researchers who’ve spent significant time in industry, and are able to consider real-world applications of the different research methods and findings of One Basin’s projects.

“We need people like Caroline, Julie and Tim who can work across academia, industry, government and community, and explain how some of the more arcane models and methodologies relate to real lives on the ground,” he says. “With his psychology background, Tim really understands how people and social systems interact with technology. It’s a unique skillset that’s so useful in agricultural and water industries, and is helping us steer our technology program, and understand how our projects can link together and support each other going forwards.”