Free tool
Worming, flea and tick calendar by postcode
Parasite advice is written for a country that spans the monsoon tropics and cool temperate Tasmania, which is why so much of it is useless: “treat monthly in tick season” means August in Cairns, October in Sydney, and nothing at all in Perth. Put your postcode in and this gives you the twelve months where you live — when each parasite is actually about, and what falls due when.
No account, no email, nothing sent anywhere.
Tick season is earlier than you think, and it never really ends
The best data on this in Australia is a series of 22,840 tick paralysis cases in dogs and cats, collected over about twenty years across four east-coast regions. Three findings in it contradict the folklore almost every owner is working from:
- The peak moves with latitude, and it is earlier in the north — August in far north Queensland, November by the time you reach Sydney.
- Cases fall through the hottest months. January and February are quieter than spring in every region studied. “Summer is tick season” is backwards.
- There is no month with none. Cases occurred in every month of the year, in every region, including the coldest. That is the argument for treating through winter in one sentence.
| Region | Peak | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Far north Queensland | August–September | Cairns and Innisfail. The earliest peak in the country. |
| South-east Queensland | September–October | A separate Sunshine Coast series puts maximum admissions in October. |
| Sydney | October–November | Later than Queensland, and later than most owners plan for. |
| Gippsland, Victoria | February–April, then mid-September–October | Two seasons rather than one — the only studied region that behaves this way. |
Those four regions are the ones with published peaks. Northern NSW, the NSW south coast and everywhere between them are not in the series, so the calendar above applies the nearest studied region's pattern and labels the row interpolated where it does. How bad a given season turns out is set earlier still: egg-laying weather in the previous January and February drives it, which is why one spring is a disaster and the next is quiet.
What a postcode can tell you, and what it can't
A postcode box invites you to believe there is a per-postcode dataset behind it. There isn't, for anyone — and the honest version of this tool is one that says so. The paralysis tick's range is published as a band: 2,713 occurrence records with a median distance from the coast of 19.41 km, running from around Starcke in far north Queensland to Bairnsdale and Metung in East Gippsland. A median is not a fence. The furthest confirmed record is 274.8 km inland, near Amiens on the Queensland Granite Belt.
So this tool maps postcodes to ten climate zones, not to a risk score, and it labels each one inside the band, at the margin or no established population. Where a number rests on inference rather than Australian case data — the flea months, for instance, which come from the species' published climate envelope because no Australian month-by-month flea dataset exists — the row says so. Your vet sees what actually walks through the door in your suburb. If their advice differs from this page, follow theirs.
“Every three months” is contested, and it's worth knowing why
Two current Australian positions disagree about how often to worm an adult animal, and neither is fringe. Agriculture Victoria states three-monthly worming for adult dogs — the interval most Australians grew up with, chosen to shorten the window in which an infected dog contaminates the ground, not to prevent infection. The parasitologists behind the ACAZAP guidelines now argue for monthly, on two grounds: whipworm's prepatent period of 8 to 12 weeks is shorter than a quarterly interval covers, and a survey of 190 Australian dog parks found 43% of parks contaminated with at least one helminth, hookworm most of all.
Pulling in the other direction, the same research community has documented widespread benzimidazole resistance in Australian hookworm — which is an argument against dosing everything monthly out of habit. What both camps actually support is a risk-based answer: more often where the risk is real (a young child in the house, a hunting or scavenging animal, tropical hookworm pressure), less often where it is not. That is what the checkboxes above do.
One interval is not disputed at all. A dog with access to raw sheep or goat offal, farm carcasses or wild game needs praziquantel every six weeks for the hydatid tapeworm — stated identically by the Victorian Department of Health, NSW DPI and Agriculture Victoria. That one is a human health measure: the eggs infect people, and the cysts they form come out surgically or not at all.
The ten zones
Not climate classes for their own sake — each zone exists because it changes at least one line of the advice. “Arid inland” and “northern inland” share a climate and differ on ehrlichiosis, which is the difference a dog owner actually needs.
| Zone | Paralysis tick | Heartworm | The local catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wet tropics — north Queensland coast | Peak August–September | High | Ehrlichiosis in the brown dog tick population |
| Monsoonal north — Top End and the Kimberley | Not established | High | Ehrlichiosis in the brown dog tick population |
| Northern inland — hot, dry, and ehrlichiosis country | Not established | Moderate | Ehrlichiosis in the brown dog tick population |
| Subtropical east coast | Peak September–October | Moderate | Hydatid where there is livestock |
| Temperate east coast | Peak October–November | Low | Hydatid where there is livestock |
| East Gippsland — the southern edge of the tick band | Peak February–April, and again mid-September–October | Low | Two tick seasons, at the southern limit |
| Temperate south — southern cities and coast | Not established | Low | Hydatid where there is livestock |
| Inland temperate — tablelands, downs and the wheat belt | Not established | Low | Hydatid where there is livestock |
| Arid inland | Not established | Minimal | Fleas largely absent; hydatid in grazing country |
| Tasmania | Not established | Minimal | Hydatid-free since 1996 — keep it that way |
Common questions
- When is paralysis tick season in Australia?
- It depends where you are, and the peaks are earlier than most owners assume. A series of 22,840 tick paralysis cases in dogs and cats found the peak in far north Queensland in August and September, south-east Queensland in September and October, and the Sydney region in October and November. Gippsland in Victoria has two separate seasons — February to April, then mid-September to October. Cases were recorded in every month of the year, in every region studied.
- Do I still need tick prevention in winter?
- Yes, on the east coast. The same case series found tick paralysis in the coldest winter months in every region it covered, and case numbers actually fall through the hottest part of summer rather than rising. Seasonal treatment fails at the shoulders — the months either side of the peak, when owners have stopped or not yet started.
- Which postcodes have paralysis ticks?
- No published source maps the paralysis tick by postcode, and this tool does not pretend to. The range is a band along the east coast from around Starcke in far north Queensland to Bairnsdale and Metung in East Gippsland, with a median distance from the coast of 19.41 km across 2,713 occurrence records — but a confirmed record sits 274.8 km inland near Amiens on the Queensland Granite Belt. Treat the band as a guide and your own vet as the authority on your street.
- How often should I worm my dog in Australia?
- Two current Australian positions differ. Agriculture Victoria states three-monthly worming for adult dogs, which is the interval most Australians know. The parasitologists behind the Australian Companion Animal Zoonoses Advisory Panel guidelines now argue for monthly, because whipworm’s prepatent period of 8 to 12 weeks is shorter than a quarterly interval covers and a survey of 190 Australian dog parks found 43% contaminated with at least one helminth. Pulling the other way, benzimidazole resistance is now widespread in Australian hookworm, which is an argument against blanket dosing. A risk-based answer — monthly where there is a young child, a hunting dog or tropical hookworm pressure, quarterly for a low-risk suburban adult — is what both camps support.
- Does my dog need heartworm prevention all year in Australia?
- Most Australian clinics advise year-round prevention, and the strongest argument for it is compliance rather than climate: a monthly dose people actually remember beats a seasonal one they restart late. The honest counterpoint is that peer-reviewed Australian modelling finds transmission is not continuously possible in the places where more than 97% of Australian dogs live, and the University of Adelaide publishes a postcode-level transmission tracker built so vets can tailor prevention. Risk is genuinely high in tropical north Queensland and the Top End, and low in South Australia, where a survey of 141 practices estimated prevalence at 0.002% with every confirmed case in a dog that had moved from interstate.
- Do fleas die off over winter?
- No. Flea development slows from about three weeks in summer heat to five to seven weeks in winter, and the eggs, larvae and pupae live in the house rather than on the animal — adults can stay dormant in the cocoon for up to 30 weeks in cool conditions. Heated houses do the rest. The exception is arid inland Australia, where fleas are largely absent because the environment is too dry for the larvae.
- What is ehrlichiosis and where in Australia is it?
- Canine ehrlichiosis is a serious tick-borne disease carried by the brown dog tick, first detected in Australia in May 2020. It now occurs across the Northern Territory, the Kimberley, Pilbara, Gascoyne and northern Goldfields in Western Australia, north-western Queensland, and the far north of South Australia. A tick can transmit it within about three hours of attaching, so tick prevention in the north is about repelling and killing ticks fast, not only killing them eventually.
- Do cats need flea and tick treatment too?
- Yes, and with one hard rule: never use a dog product on a cat. Permethrin is routine in canine spot-ons and toxic to cats — of 26 Australian adverse reports, 22 were an owner applying a dog product to a cat, and 23% of the affected cats died. Cats get tick paralysis as well, and tend to hide the early signs better than dogs do.
- Why is hydatid worming every six weeks?
- Because the hydatid tapeworm becomes patent in the dog in roughly six to seven weeks, so a six-weekly praziquantel dose stops a re-infected dog ever shedding eggs. It applies to dogs with access to raw sheep or goat offal, farm carcasses or wild game, and it is a human health measure: people who swallow the eggs form cysts in the liver, lungs or brain that can only be removed surgically. Tasmania is the exception — it has been provisionally free of hydatids since February 1996, which is why feeding untreated offal to dogs there is prohibited.
- Do I need an account to use this?
- No. There is no sign-up and no email capture, and nothing you type is sent anywhere — the calendar is worked out in your own browser. You can print it, or download it as repeating calendar reminders that work in Apple Calendar, Google Calendar and Outlook.
Next, the useful stuff
- Paralysis tick season checklist — the early symptoms, the daily check routine, and what to do in the hour after you find one.
- Puppy & kitten vaccination schedule generator — the other set of dates in the first year, and the one with a deadline attached.
- Pet sitter information sheet — printable, including which prevention is due while you are away.
- Council registration due dates — the one date a year that carries a fine, and it is a different date in every state.
- All free tools — no account, no email capture, on any of them.
The hard part isn’t knowing. It’s remembering, every month, forever.
A calendar file reminds one phone. Household Pet logs each dose against the pet instead of the person, so anyone in the household can see the tick preventative was given on the 3rd — and the reminder goes to whoever is actually home to do the next one.
Sources
- The University of Queensland — Data uncovers new tick threat times for Australian pets (Barker et al., 22,840 tick paralysis cases)
- The University of Queensland — UQ model predicts tick cases in Queensland pets (season severity set by the previous January–February)
- Raghavan et al., Scientific Reports (2021) — Climatic suitability of Ixodes holocyclus and its likely distribution in 2050 (2,713 occurrence records; median 19.41 km from the coast)
- Clark et al., PLOS Computational Biology (2022) — Near-term forecasting of companion animal tick paralysis incidence, Sunshine Coast 2007–2017
- NSW DPIRD Primefact 84 — Ticks of concern to NSW stock owners
- Australian Museum — Australian paralysis tick
- Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry — Ehrlichiosis in dogs: travelling with your dog in Australia
- WA Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development — Ehrlichiosis
- Northern Territory Government — Ehrlichiosis disease in dogs
- Business Queensland — Canine ehrlichiosis
- PIRSA (South Australia) — Ehrlichiosis disease in dogs
- Crkvencic & Šlapeta, Parasites & Vectors (2019) — Climate change models predict a southerly shift of the cat flea in Australia (3–35 °C, 70–95% RH, >500 mm rainfall)
- RSPCA Australia Knowledgebase — How do I stop my companion animal from getting fleas?
- Rust, Insects (2017) — The biology and ecology of cat fleas (development 20–24 days in summer against 36–50 days in winter)
- University of Adelaide — Canine Heartworm Transmission Tracker (postcode-level transmission modelling; Atkinson et al., Aust Vet J 2024)
- Šlapeta et al., Parasites & Vectors (2016) — Cracking the heartworm code: prevalence in Australian dogs then and now
- Panetta, Šlapeta et al., Parasites & Vectors (2021) — Dirofilaria immitis in Queensland: northern dogs 4.39× more likely to test positive
- Dearsley, O’Handley & Caraguel, Australian Veterinary Journal (2019) — Heartworm in South Australia: an estimated prevalence of 0.002%, all confirmed cases relocated interstate
- Agriculture Victoria — Responsible ownership of farm working dogs (three-monthly all-wormer; hydatid tapeworm treatment every six weeks in hydatid areas)
- Prof. Rebecca Traub, Melbourne Veterinary School — Demystifying deworming: a parasitologist’s perspective (monthly deworming, per the ACAZAP guidelines)
- Massetti et al., International Journal for Parasitology (2022) — Helminths in 190 Australian dog parks: 43% of parks positive, hookworm 10.2%, whipworm poorly detected on flotation
- TroCCAP — Tropical Council for Companion Animal Parasites: canine hookworm and feline heartworm guidelines for the tropics
- Victorian Department of Health — Hydatid disease (echinococcosis): praziquantel every six weeks for at-risk dogs
- NSW DPI Primefact 812 — Hydatids: the basics (Stephen Love)
- Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania — Hydatid disease: Tasmania provisionally free since February 1996
- Rivory & Šlapeta, Microbiology Australia (2025) — Neuroangiostrongyliasis in Australian dogs: 92 cases 2010–2020, peaks April–June
- Linnett, Australian Veterinary Journal (2008) — Permethrin toxicosis in cats: 26 Australian reports, 23% of affected cats died
- Companion Animal Parasite Council — Dipylidium caninum (the flea tapeworm)
Reviewed August 2026. This calendar is general information for Australian pet owners, not veterinary advice. It describes the pattern in a climate zone rather than a plan for your animal, and it deliberately shows where the evidence is thin: flea months are inferred from the species' climate envelope rather than from Australian case data, paralysis tick peaks are published for four regions only, and both heartworm dosing and adult worming intervals are the subject of live disagreement between current Australian sources. Your vet sets the products and the intervals — print this, take it in, and let them correct it.