This project was undertaken as an Independent stream for the final graduating design studio. It is a preparatory project toward PhD canditure at QUT in 2011. The working title of the PhD is: "Landscape Architecture design research and practice for the strategic management of tourism infrastructures in arid lands of Central Australia". This project then is speculative and propositional, it considers two desert occupation typologies. In this case Settler and Nomad, which have no like characteristics, these are then hybridised as heterozygotic forms. A heterozygote is defined as: "a hybrid containing genes for two unlike characteristics; an organism that will not breed true to type". (The Macquarie Dictionary, 1999, pg 1005)

The proposition aims to find new modes of desert occupation that engage with natural ecologies and ephemeral flows to improve living conditions and increase care for country. It recognises that country exists within the sky, land water continuum. This project is supported by the aspirations of two major management organisations in Central Australia:
The South Australian Arid Lands Management Board which works to identify maintain and secure priority aquatic ecosystems associated with important drainage lines, flood plains and wetlands in the Lake Eyre Basin.

The Lake Eyre Basin Heritage Tourism Board also has a series of future management strategies for increased tourist use with the need to balance fragile ecosystems and cultural heritage of the Arid Lands.