Home Range

1Set a home

A point and a circle

Type a street, suburb or town, tap Use my location, or choose a point on the map. Then choose how far around it to look, from 1 to 10 km.

The home stays on the phone. The app counts homes only by their nearest suburb, and keeps nothing about who you are.

Here the home is the middle of Molendinar, and the circle reaches 5 km in every direction: Parkwood and Arundel to the north, Ashmore and Benowa to the south, Nerang to the west and the edge of Southport to the east.

2Living here

What has been recorded

Home Range adds up the wildlife records in squares of about 1 km whose middles fall inside the circle. The darker a square, the more records. On the Gold Coast the app carries its own copy of the records; anywhere else it asks the Atlas of Living Australia when the home is set.

Within 5 km of this home: 905 species and 109,254 records since 2000, 18 of the species threatened under national or Queensland lists. Each has its own page, with photos, calls where there are recordings, and where and when it has been recorded near home.

3Today

What is happening this week

Today opens on what is happening in nature near home now: here, magpies starting to swoop. It also gives the time of sunset and when the flying-foxes leave their camps, the calls to listen for, what has been seen lately and the birds arriving or leaving with the season.

4At home

What grew here before the houses

At home reads the state's own vegetation map at the home. In Queensland that is the Queensland Herbarium's map of regional ecosystems before clearing, coloured by how each is listed now: purple endangered and olive of concern where that ecosystem is the main one in an area, lilac and yellow where it is a lesser part of a mix, and pale green no concern at present.

This home was blackbutt open forest (regional ecosystem 12.11.23), now listed as endangered: about 2,000 of its 9,000 hectares were left in 2021. Below, At home lists the plants of that vegetation to grow in the garden. Every state and territory has its own version, from its own map (in South Australia, the settled south).

5The year

A nature calendar

The year in nature is a ring of the months, with a band for each kind of note: birds, sea life, mammals, reptiles, frogs, insects, plants, weeds and pests, and the weather. Each note says what to look for and where. Written calendars cover the Gold Coast and sixteen cities; anywhere else, the months come from the records near home.

6Get involved

Days to join near home

Get involved lists local days: surveys, plantings and walks, each with its place on the map and directions to it. These are the Gold Coast days in the app in October 2026.

It starts with who to call for an animal in trouble, by state, and ends with citizen science projects and national days such as the Aussie Bird Count. Here, a sea slug survey on the rocks at Burleigh and waterbug sampling in Currumbin Valley.

7Anywhere in Australia

Sixteen cities and the Gold Coast

Home Range works for a home anywhere in Australia. Each dot is a city with its own written nature calendar and local days: the eight capitals, and Newcastle, Wollongong, Geelong, the Sunshine Coast, Toowoomba, Townsville, Cairns and Launceston.

8Test yourself

Learn the animals around home

A game for learning to name the animals recorded near home, from a photo, a call or a few clues about how they live. An animal counts as learnt once it is named right first time on two different days.