Electoral Rolls
Because of the scarcity of census records in Australia, electoral registers serve as a viable alternative and are often referred to as “Census Substitutes”.
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Probates and Wills
Probate records can be a precious source for family historians as they can give important information about an ancestor and are often the only record where all members of a family may be listed.
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Professions and Occupations
Finding out what your ancestor’s occupation was might help you unravel the puzzle of why your ancestor resided in a certain place or had no permanent address.
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Historic Newspapers
Historic newspapers are an extremely valuable source for family historians. Local and rural newspapers in Australia provided a lot of information about people and families in their area.
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Naturalisation and Citizenship
Naturalisation records are a useful source of information for identifying the arrival and native location of an immigrant ancestor.
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Military Records
The military history of Australia spans the nation’s 230-year modern history.
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Hospitals, Infirm and Destitute Asylums
Although not ideal for the ancestor, learning that an ancestor was hospitalised is valuable to the family history researcher since hospital, and infirm and destitute asylum, records may offer a wealth of information.
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Land and Property Records
Deeds and other land records are a potential source of information about family members, family ties, and other areas in which your ancestor resided, in addition to informing you what land your ancestors may have owned and where it was located.
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Immigration Records
For most Australians, the arrival of their ancestors is a pivotal moment in their family history.
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Criminal Records
The large collections of criminal records available to family historians give us an in-depth insight into crimes and punishments in the past but also the everyday lives of working people, who are so frequently anonymous in other historical records. Even some of the most ‘respectable’ households may have turned to minor crimes to help support themselves.
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Convicts
From the arrival of the First Fleet at Botany Bay in January 1788 to the last shipment of convicts to Western Australia in 1868, over 162,000 convicts were transported to Australia.
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Church Registers
Recording of Australian baptisms, marriages, and burials began on the voyage of the First Fleet in 1787 and continues to this day.
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Census Records and Substitutes
While the first country-wide census in Australia was taken in 1881, national censuses have only been regularly taken since 1911.
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Cemeteries
When a death certificate cannot be found, cemetery records can give information on the death of an ancestor. They may also offer more information on a deceased ancestor and their close family.
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Birth, Marriage, and Death Records – Civil Registration
Civil registration of births, deaths and marriages was introduced at different times in each colony/state and territory.
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