Naturalisation had been a responsibility of the individual colonies until 1903 when it was taken over by the Commonwealth. As a consequence, the National Archives holds citizenship records for all states from 1904. However, the National Archives also holds naturalisation records for the Colony of Victoria and the Province of South Australia for the period from 1848 to 1903. Naturalisation records for New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania before 1904 are held by the respective State government archives.
View record page
Documents may include application forms, passenger lists, entry permits and accommodation records and naturalisation. Records are available if they are more than 30 years old. For arrivals by sea betwen 1926 and 1950, you can search the Freemantle passenger lists. Most passenger vessels from Europe made Fremantle, Western Australia, their first port.
View record page
An alphabetical index to all the microfilm shipping registers the National Archives hold. The most important of these registers are the Australian Registers of British Ships (1834-1982). The online index is searched by entering the whole or part of a ship's name and/or year of voyage and basic information is then provided about the ship, namely, the official number, the year built, the port number, the National Archive microfilm roll number and which National Archive office in Australia holds the record.
View record page
The Australian National Shipwrecks Database covers all known shipwrecks in Australian waters and can provide details of the ships voyage, the wreck location, the features of the vessel, crew and passengers. The number of shipwrecks listed totals 7664 including: NSW (2047), VIC (797), TAS (1116), QLD (1244), SA (774), WA (1466), NT (153) and Cocos Islands (2).
View record page
The Noel Butlin Archives Centre (NBAC) collects business and labour records from:
Australian companies, e.g. the Australian Agricultural Company, Burns Philp, CSR Ltd and Tooth and Co.
trade unions, e.g. the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU)
industry bodies, e.g. the National Farmers Federation
professional organisations, e.g. the Institute of Public Affairs
personal papers of prominent individuals associated with industrial organisations, the labour movement, businesses, professional associations and industry bodies
Prepared by the Parliamentary Education Office of the Australian Parliament to provide background, commentary and web links on current topics and about Parliament.
Provides election results for state lower houses of parliament since 1890, and for Commonwealth Parliament since 1901. It also provides information about politicians and political parties and how they performed in elections. Produced by the University of Western Australia.
View record page
Images and information about prints and printmaking, posters, and book arts from Australia, Aboriginal Australia, the Torres Strait Islands, Papua New Guinea, Maori and Pakeha Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific region including Nuie, Samoa, Kiribati, and the Solomon Islands.
View record page
Australian Public Affairs Full Text (APAFT) provides access to articles from humanities and social science journals, based on the database APAIS (Australian Public Affairs Information Service).
Records and letters relating to the establishment of the Society's activities in the Anglican Church of Australia, including Tasmania, and the development of a diocesan.
Compiled by Phyllis Wilson of the Returned Service Nurses Club of Victoria, this website lists 102 Australian nurses who died as a result of war service in the Boer War (1), World War 1 (24), World War 2 (76) and the Vietnam War (1).
View record page
Contains shipping and passenger information for Australia and, to an increasing extent, New Zealand. Information is derived primarily from historical newspapers and state and national archive material. The website has the following shipping indexes: Arrivals, Departures, Shipwrecks, Ship's Captains, Passengers and crew, Vessel index , Historical background, Vessel related reports and diaries, journals and reports. There are also some pioneer biographies and ship images. Although there are a significant number of entries found here, it is just a small fraction of the total from 1788 to 1968. This website contains almost all of the convict ships, as well as most of the ships that arrived in Sydney before 1825 where passengers were known to be on board. One area that is particularly difficult for researchers is the coastal movement of people, as many of these are not listed in official records. For these types of records, the best place to look is in the 'Shipping Intelligence' columns of the newspapers of the time.
View record page
The Australian Society of Archivists Inc. (ASA) is Australia’s peak professional body for archivists and recordkeepers. They advocate on behalf of archivists, and the archival and recordkeeping profession, and seek to promote the value of archives and records as well as support best practice standards and services.
Resources in Australian history and literature at the University of Sydney Library's Scholarly Electronic Text and Image Service (SETIS). SETIS is the creator of digital editions of Australian literary and historical texts and hosts a number of other Australian studies resources.
View record page
The Australian War Memorial's national collection covers Australia's past involvment in the following armed conflicts : New Zealand (Maori Wars) 1860-1866; Sudan (NSW contigent) 1885; South Africa (Boer War) 1899-1902; China (Boxer Uprising) 1900-1901; the First World War (1914-1918); the Second World War (1939-1945); British Commonwealth Occupation Forces (1946-1952); the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960); the Korean War (1950-1953); Indonesian Confrontation (1963-1966); the Vietnam War (1962-1972); the Gulf War (1990-1991); East Timor (1999 - ); Afghanistan (2000 - ); Iraq (2003 - ) and various peacekeeping operations.
View record page
The National Library of Australia has digitised issues of the Australian Women's Weekly from 1933 to 1982. Our trial webpage helps users discover this unique material powered by Trove.
This database is an important resource for research on architecture and design, covering a wide range of international scholarly and popular journals including the publications of professional associations and the major serial publications of Europe, Asia, America and Australia.
Coverage is from 1934 to the present with selective indexing of earlier publications, such as the Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects back to 1865.
The Aboriginal history of Sydney City. Contains a thematic introduction, biographies, useful contacts, and references to books, films, images and websites.
View record page
This web page, created by James Dixon and maintained by John & Barbara Dixon, aims to help people tracing their family history by explaining the usage of the different entries on birth, marriage, and death certificates throughout the 150-year history of civil registration in England and Wales. The birth registrations of Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Southern Ireland are different from those of England and Wales and are not covered here.
View record page
From the Science Department of Arizona State University this interactive site includes a documentary on human evolution, news and feature articles and lines of descent in the human family tree.
An index of the inmates of the Sydney Benevolent Asylum for the period 1857-1900 compiled from records held at the Mitchell Library, Sydney.
View record page
Information for adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents and anyone affected by adoption. Provides information about services available, how to undertake a search, legislation in NSW, other states and overseas, post-adoption stories and weblinks to other services such as NSW Department of Community Services and adoption support groups.
View record page
A network for people who are attracted to more than one gender and enhance the understanding, acceptance, inclusion and celebration of bisexuality and pansexuality.
Photograph and record cemetery headstones using your iphone/android camera app. GPS registers the location. Headstones can be transcribed. There are many Australian headstones included.
View record page
Full text of almost 4000 historical books and periodicals relating to Australian biology, biodiversity, taxonomy, science and anthropology. It also contains over 100,000 international works.
View record page
This resource contains transcripts and indexes of original records and published biographies of deceased individuals who arrived, or were born in, Australia. It includes over 900,000 archival and biographical records such as parish register entries, Colonial Secretary records 1788-1825, Commissariat ration records, convict records, musters, and census information.
Hosted on the EBSCO platform, this database contains over 627,000 article and book citations. It covers public figures, including actors, artists, business people, educators, military leaders, politicians, religious leaders, scientists, sports figures, statesmen, teachers, writers, etc. Document supply available.
Learn about the works and lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers and storytellers, and the literary cultures and traditions that influenced them. Find information on all forms of creative writing, plus film, television, criticism and scholarship, both by and about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers.
The platform hosts the online 21st edition of Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global History of Architecture which covers 5,500 years of architecture from pre-history to the present day. Also included are 42 ebooks on architecture, architectural history, theory, design, urbanism, landscape, and interiors.
Hosted on the EBSCO platform, Book Review Digest Retrospective provides excerpts from and citations to reviews of adult and juvenile fiction and non-fiction. Document supply available.
An online readers advisory. Browse by genre or search by author or title to find overviews and reviews of your favourite books. Includes a Read-a-likes suggestion list for each book result as well as linking to other related subjects, time periods and location settings. New and updated book overviews appear on the front of the homepage regularly.
Global Books in Print Plus (Online) contains bibliographic information on publications from Australia, New Zealand, Europe and North America. Subjects covered include Books in Print, Subject Guide to Books in Print and Children's Books in Print. Document supply available.
View record page
Full text of the Report of the national inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families.
View record page
Encyclopædia Britannica Online includes the complete encyclopaedia online along with additional material. Also included are Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus, Britannica Student Encyclopaedia and the Britannica Book of the Year. You can use Encyclopædia Britannica Online to search an Internet directory that includes more than 300,000 links to Web sites selected, rated, and reviewed by Britannica editors. Document supply available.
The national body in Britain promoting local history and serving local historians. The association publishes The Local Historian, quarterly journal, and Local History News, a topical magazine, both of which are indexed and archived on the website.This gateway site to local history also provides links to local societies and national local history bodies.
View record page
The State Library of Queensland has complied this database from The HO 11 Criminal Convict Transportation Registers (HO 11) records which are available on microfilm as part of the Australian Joint Copying Project (AJCP). Over 123,000 out of the estimated 160,000 convicts transported to Australia are recorded in this database. These include prisoners sent to New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), Moreton Bay (Brisbane), Western Australia and Norfolk Island. These records mainly include those convicted in England and Scotland. Only a small number of Irish convicts appear in this series of the Home Office records. The database also includes soldiers who had been court-martialled and sentenced to transportation. These 'soldier convicts' may have been convicted in various British colonies including the West Indies, India, Pakistan and Canada.
View record page
A digital library of documents about people, places and businesses from the medieval and early modern period, created by the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust. Includes some volumes from the Victoria County History series as well as links to directories and lists such as the Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, which lists officials in the Church of England 1541-1857.
View record page
The British Library Newspapers collection contains more than 160 newspapers specially selected by the British Library to best represent eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries Britain:
British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900. Sample titles: Illustrated Police News, Morning Chronicle, the Examiner.
British Library Newspapers, Part II: 1800-1900. Sample titles: The Standard, the Morning Post.
British Library Newspapers, Part III: 1741-1950. Sample titles: Leeds Intelligencer, Northampton Mercury, the Westmoreland Gazette.
British Library Newspapers, Part IV: 1732-1950. Sample titles: Stamford Mercury, the Scots Magazine, Dundee Courier.
British Library Newspapers, Part V: 1746-1950. Sample title: Coventry Herald
British Library Newspapers, Part VI: Ireland 1783-1950. Sample title: The Galway Press
This collection includes national and regional newspapers, as well as those from both established country or university towns and the new industrial powerhouses of the manufacturing Midlands, as well as Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Coverage includes famines and independence, issues around migration, along with the impact of the first world war.
Special attention was paid to include newspapers that helped lead particular political or social movements such as Reform, Chartism, and Home Rule. The penny papers aimed at the working and clerical classes are also present in the collection.
The British Newspapers 1600-1737 collection includes the 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers collection and the 17th-18th Century Nichols Newspapers collection. Document supply available.
A database of still images and footage from historical cinema newsreels produced by one of the oldest media companies in the world, British Pathe. Low-resolution previews may be downloaded for free. High-resolution licensed clips are available for purchase online.
View record page
Provides full-text access to hundreds of British periodicals from the late 17th to the early 20th century. Subjects covered include literature, philosophy, science, social sciences, music, drama, art and architecture. Document supply available.
British Politics and Society includes primary sources related to the political climate in Great Britain during the 19th century. Collections within this archive include Home Office records, papers of British statesmen, working class autobiographies, ordnance surveys, drawings, maps, newspapers, periodicals, photographs, poster, pamphlets and more. This database is a resource for the study of British domestic and foreign policy, trade unions, Chartism, utopian socialism, public protest, radical movements, the cartographic record, political reform, education, family relationships, religion, leisure and many others. Document supply available. Part of Nineteenth Century Collections Online
Business Source Complete provides full text for nearly 3,800 scholarly business journals, including full text for more than 1,100 peer-reviewed business publications. Coverage includes virtually all subject areas related to business. This database provides full text (PDF) for more than 350 of the top scholarly journals dating as far back as 1922. Also includes country reports, company and industry profiles and market research reports. Document supply available.
Cambridge Companions Online is a fully searchable, full text collection of over 360 titles from the renowned Cambridge Companion series. It's regularly updated with new titles in the Companion series.
The subject areas covered are literature, classics, philosophy, religion and cultural studies.
A searchable online collection of more than 260 volumes published in various history series by Cambridge University Press since 1960.
This collection provides unique authoritative content covering history in 15 different subject areas including world history, ancient and medieval history, economics, science, literature, philosophy and religion.
The story of Captain James Cook told through the collections of the British Library and other institutions such as the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum.
View record page
