Microscopic organisms such as fungi, bacteria and viruses can cause disease and infection, but most can be treated with pharmaceutical drugs. These tiny organisms change and evolve over time, sometimes in ways that make them resistant to the drugs. Some environments cause the selection and evolution of more medicine-resistant genes than others, but there is a lack of information about this threat to health care that Australia’s National Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy wants to address. In this project samples of water, sediment and manure will be collected from a variety of urban and agricultural environments. The types and amounts of antimicrobial resistant bacteria and genes they contain will be analysed and the results will begin establishment of a baseline database whilst also developing sampling and analysis methods for application in future studies.