Australia
Listed below are some key Australia-wide family history resources. For information relating to a specific State or Territory, please from the links on the left.
Key Resources
Tracing your family history in Australia: a national guide to sourcesTracing your family history in Australia: a bibliography
Australian Joint Copying Project
This is a large collection of microfilmed material, from archives and libraries in the United Kingdom, relating to Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific, most of South East Asia and Antarctica.
Findmypast Australasia - available within the State Library building
This e-resource contains material relating to all Australian states and New Zealand with a small amount of content for the Pacific Islands and Papua New Guinea. The Australian states with the largest amount of material are Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. Most content is from published sources and includes almanacs, Blue books, electoral rolls, government gazettes, police gazettes, post office directories and more.
Archives and Libraries
The National Archives of Australia
The National Archives houses Commonwealth government records such as military, immigration and naturalisation papers. Records date from Federation in 1901 although, for some government departments, earlier material dating back to the mid-1850s is held. Over 18 million records have been digitised and are searchable by selecting Search the collection from their home page. Other material can be viewed in their State and Territory reading rooms.
The National Library of Australia
Explore TROVE for digital content and information on collections around Australia. Some of the most important sections for family historians include:
- TROVE digitised newspapers
Digitised newspapers from around Australia up to 1954. We recommend using Advanced Search. - TROVE pictures, photos, objects
Search for photographs, artworks etc. from around Australia. For online content only go to Picture Australia. - TROVE maps
Search maps of Australia and the world. Only some of the content can be viewed online. - TROVE archived websites
Search archived websites dating from 1996 onwards as part of the National Library's Pandora project. Many of the websites are no longer available on the web including First Families 2001 (see details below). - First Families 2001
This archived site is a database of names and a collection of stories about the people of Australia and was completed to celebrate 100 years of Federation.
Family history and genealogy subject guides
Libraries Australia
Combined catalogue of Australian libraries.
Gateways
Use our SLWA Family History Bookmarks to find websites for Australia recommended by the Family History Subject Specialists. Simply click on any heading of interest e.g. australia-newspapers to see a list of websites relating to this topic. The larger the tag, the more websites appear on the list.
The following sites are also useful gateways to Australian family history material:
Web Sites for Genealogists by Cora Num
Australian family history and genealogy selected websites by the National Library of Australia
Journals
The Genealogist / Australian Institute of Genealogical Studies
Australian Family Tree Connections
To search for particular names or topics in this journal see the:
Page last updated: Tuesday 31 January 2012
