Paratya australiensis is a common freshwater shrimp found in most catchments in south-eastern Australia. Microsatellite loci were isolated from a partial genomic library created using 454 sequencing. Of the 25 tested, 13 were found to be polymorphic, however, for pooling purposes only 12 were used for genotyping. The number of alleles per locus varied from 2 to 14 in a population from Wakefield River, South Australia, and the mean (range) observed and expected heterozygosity were 0.512 (0.136-0.909) and 0.590 (0.165-0.788), respectively across all alleles. These microsatellites will be used to study the genetic structure of populations in two catchments in South Australia.