Rarely are decision support tools developed by those who use them. This creates the potential for mismatching support provided with actual help required. Client context evaluation surveys offer a means of ensuring the output of decision support tools match the needs of clients they are intended to serve. This paper recounts the experiences gained from a context evaluation survey to clarify how irrigators in the northern part of the Murray-Darling Basin make cropping area and water management decisions. Examples from survey findings illustrate the nature of the information to be gleaned from context evaluations. Irrigators demonstrated a good general understanding of the relationship between the Southern Oscillation Index (SOl) and rainfall in their area. Twenty per cent were very confident and 62% have some knowledge/understanding of the application of climate information to decisions. Twenty-nine per cent use the SOl in farming decisions. More than 50% would find a tool/information system useful to aid water and climate-related decisions and another 30% may find it useful. This survey has facilitated the formation of a focus group that is cooperating with the core researchers to continuously assess all new improvements to the project's set of decision support tools. Survey findings and interactions with the focus group have implications for design of decision support tools, technology transfer and making the information generated by our models understandable and acceptable to the practising farmers.