If you want to find the closest named location (a gazetteer location) to any point within the Australian region, you can simply click on the map in the Spatial Portal and the closest 5 locations will be displayed. 

Why would you use this function? 

An example may illustrate why. A group of Atlas users focusing on Australia’s islands wanted to find out what information was available on all Australian islands. Of particular interest, were islands that had not been named in the Australian gazetteer.  What they did was to zoom in on an area of the coast and then use this function to identify which islands did not have a name.

More information can be found at Tools | Nearest locality