Over the past year there have been a number of new and updated records added to the database at FamilySearch. Below are some of the data sets added for Australia. While not all records contain images, they are all available free and are well worth exploring.
Victoria Petty Sessions Registers 1858-1985
Court records extracted from several different Archival Series and held
by the Public Record Office Victoria in North Melbourne, Australia. The
records are arranged chronologically within each of the Magistrate
Courts and contain brief details of minor criminal matters and committal
proceedings.
Number of Records - 3,095,843
Australia Cemetery Inscriptions, 1802-2005
Cards of cemetery inscriptions from
many cemeteries throughout Australia. The majority of the cemeteries are
in Queensland, but there are some in New South Wales, Norfolk Island,
Tasmania, and Western Australia. Some cards include information culled
from local newspapers which sometimes include birth and marriage
announcements. The cards are sometimes in reverse alphabetical order and
there are sometimes many interfiled cards which do not belong to the
sequence--generally these have a slash mark across the cards that do not
belong in the sequence. The file was the product of many years of work
by Jim and Alison Rogers.
Number of Records - 1,124,411
Victoria Coastal Passenger Lists, 1852-1924
Coastal passenger lists from
Victoria, Australia. The original lists are located in the Public
Records Office of Victoria, North Melbourne, Australia.
Number of Records - 3,244,620
South Australia, Immigrants Ship Papers, 1849-1940
Immigrants ships papers containing a
record of births and deaths aboard, 1849-1867 and 1873-1885. Indexed
records in collection include passenger lists arriving and departing
from South Australia. Information on images varies but may include
ship's name, master's name, tonnage, where bound, date, port of
embarkation, names of passengers, ages, occupation, nationality, and
port at which passengers have contracted to land. Original records in
the State Records of South Australia, Adelaide.
Number of Records - 595,565
Queensland Cemetery Records, 1802-1990
An index which combines several
indexes, cemetery transcriptions, burial and other records from
cemeteries in Queensland. This collection also contains small portions
of New South Wales, Norfolk Island, Tasmania, and Western Australia.
Number of Records - 2,168,409
New South Wales, Assisted Immigrants Inwards, 1828-1890
This collection contains assisted immigrants inwards to Sydney, Australia from 1828-1890.
Number of Records - 263,719
