Fly Around Australia
Australia's very different places, on a map: a big city, the Snowy Mountains, the red centre's deserts, the rainforest and the Reef.
How it plays
A map of Australia, with Flying-fox in Sydney. Your child taps the glowing circle and Flying-fox flies on: to the Snowy Mountains, the desert in the red centre, the rainforest in Far North Queensland, the Great Barrier Reef, and home again. Ruby Roo says one true thing at each stop. There's nothing to get wrong: the next circle just waits to be tapped.
What it's for
Australia's very different places, on a map: a big city, the Snowy Mountains, the red centre's deserts, the rainforest and the Reef. There is no score to lose and no way to fail: a wrong move is met with a gentle nudge, and a level ends when it's done.
Away from the screen: A map of your room
About two minutes, with things most homes have.
- Draw a simple map of a room, or your street, together.
- Mark where you sleep with a cross.
- Your child takes a toy on a trip round the map, stopping at each place.
- Talk about which places on the big map you've been to.
Three questions to ask while they play
- Where is it hot and dry? Where is it snowy?
- Which place would you like to fly to?
- Where do we live on the map?
Play together
Things to say or ask
- We're in the Snowy Mountains! Brrr.
- Flying-foxes fly a long way at night.
Taking turns on one device: Take turns tapping the glowing circle, one stop each.
If they find it hard
Read the place names out as Flying-fox gets there, and point to the picture at each stop.
Every fact, and where it comes from
What Ruby Roo says in Fly Around Australia was checked against the page it links to.
- Flying-foxes travel long distances each night (up to 50 km) between their roosts and feeding sites, pollinating plants and spreading seeds as they go: they help keep eastern and northern Australia's woodlands healthy. (Australian Wildlife Conservancy)
- Mount Kosciuszko, in New South Wales, is the highest mountain on mainland Australia, at 2,228 metres. Australia is the lowest continent, with an average height of only 330 metres. (Geoscience Australia)
- Ten deserts make up nearly 20 per cent of mainland Australia. The largest, the Great Victoria Desert in Western Australia and South Australia, covers about 348,750 square kilometres. (Geoscience Australia)
- The Wet Tropics of north-east Queensland are the oldest continuously surviving tropical rainforests on Earth, World Heritage listed since 1988, with over 3,000 plant species. (Wet Tropics Management Authority)
- The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef ecosystem: more than 3,000 separate reefs and about 1,050 islands and cays over some 348,000 square kilometres. It has been World Heritage listed since 1981. (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority)
- Sydney is Australia's largest city, with about 5.6 million people (June 2025); more than 18 million Australians live in a capital city. (Australian Bureau of Statistics)
What it practises
- Looking and finding. For two- and three-year-olds: looking for something hidden, and knowing it's still there when you can only see a bit of it.
EYLF 4.2 (Early Years Learning Framework V2.0) - Australian animals. What animals look like and where they live (My animal friends cards).
AC9SFU01 (Science, Foundation); AC9S1U01 (Science, Year 1)
The codes are from the Early Years Learning Framework V2.0 (for children from birth to five) and the Australian Curriculum v9 (Foundation to Year 2). Each links to the official wording. Every skill, and the games for it.
What it costs, and what we collect
Nothing, and nothing. There is no account, no advertising and no tracking of any kind. Which games have been played is remembered on your own device and is never sent anywhere. The full version is here, and it's short.
Where it lives
Fly Around Australia is part of Our World. It works on a phone, a tablet or a classroom screen, and once it's been opened it keeps working with no signal at all.
Updated