Modelling of the carbon and water cycles from 2011-2018 using the CABLE-POP (aka BIOS3) land surface model suggests that while the carbon stocks in the Australian landscape responded forcefully to the Big Wet, they showed surprising resilience in the face of the subsequent (and ongoing) Big Dry. Modelling of the extended drought suggests that there has not been a loss of carbon stocks to nearly the extent suggested by the loss of greenness in remotely-sensed imagery. Instead, much of the carbon taken up quicky by the enhanced GPP appears to have found its way into the vegetation and soil pools with slow turnover times, suggesting a greater resilience of the total carbon stock than previously thought. We discuss the credibility of this result in terms of the model’s recently added capabilities, including its ability to simulate vegetation structural dynamics, wildfire, and prognostic phenology (plant characteristics emerging from environmental conditions), and our validation exercises against observational data from multiple sources. We point to other datasets that may offer guidance on this result, and describe upcoming applications exploring the carbon cycle response to climate extremes.