How to look for records of... Australian and New Zealand ancestors – an overview

This guide provides a brief overview of resources held at The National Archives that can help you to trace your family history from the UK to its former colonies in Australia and New Zealand.

It is an introduction to the sorts of records we hold, with links to guides providing more detailed advice on how to find the records in our collection.

Most of these records relate to Australia and New Zealand, encompassing the British colonial territories in Australasia before and following their independence.

In general, we do not hold the internal administrative records from Australia and New Zealand, such as registers of births, marriages and deaths or land ownership, which would have remained in place after independence. However, this guide does provide some advice on where to find these records.

Quite often record titles, descriptions, and the documents themselves use language that is now out of date and sometimes offensive, but once records are transferred to us, we don’t alter them. The terminology used by the people that created the records is part of the story they tell.

Before you begin a search, you should see if there is a guide to the records you are looking for. This guide is designed to help you do that. Throughout this guide you will find links to the more detailed advice you will need to search a specific set of records.

Records are arranged by the government department that created them, then by the type of record, such as passenger lists or military service records, and by date. There are no ‘case files’ containing all the information about a single person. For any individual, there may be several different types of records which relate to them, each of which will have to be searched for separately.

The documents themselves may be in different formats, from handwritten registers, printed lists, or large sheets of parchment, each representing one aspect of a distinct set of records.

From 1787, convicts were transported to penal settlements in modern-day Australia, specifically New South Wales and Tasmania. They could be sentenced to a set term or life, with limited freedom in the colony.

During its 80-year history 158,702 convicts arrived in Australia from England and Ireland, as well as 1,321 from other parts of the Empire. Transportation did not cease until 1868. Many records survive from this period and most records are searchable online.

For information on how to search these records read our guide to criminal transportation.

For records of criminals transported from Ireland between 1788-1868 consult the advice from the National Archives of Ireland.

Records of emigration to Australia from 1784-1950

The National Archives holds records relating to emigration from Britain to Australia. These records tend to refer to both convicts and settlers since, once in Australia, the two were often less distinct than when they set out.

Consult Section 7 in our guide to emigration which offers advice on how to search these records.

You can also search millions of records of settlers who emigrated to Australia online at Ancestry.co.uk (charges apply).

Records of travel to Australia from 1890-1960

To search lists of individuals who sailed as passengers to Australia from 1890 to 1960, consult our guide to passengers.

Bear in mind The National Archives holds no lists of passengers who sailed to Australia before 1890.

Records of child migration to Australia

Tens of thousands of children from the UK were dispatched to Australia and during the 1860s up to the 1920s.

You can find information on how to search these records in Section 10 of our research guide to emigration and emigrants.

Records of travel to Australia after 1960

After 1960, passenger lists are not held by The National Archives when air travel became more common. No air passenger lists have survived. For records of passengers who arrived by sea after 1960 it may be worth contacting the relevant shipping line.

Records of travel to New Zealand 1890-1960

The National Archives holds passenger lists for individuals boarding at UK and Irish ports travelling to New Zealand from 1890-1960.

For advice on how to search these records, consult our guide to passengers.

Records of emigration to New Zealand 1839-1850

The New Zealand Company, established in 1839, was the first European settlement in New Zealand, acquiring land and settling British emigrants. Information about British emigration to New Zealand can be found in the company’s records, now held at The National Archives.

Consult section 8 of our guide to emigrants for further information.

For further information, see guidance from the Archives New Zealand website.

Births, marriages, and deaths

Australian and New Zealand birth, marriage and deaths were generally administered locally. These records can be found at state, county, and city or town level.

You can, however, search for some records online through subscription services such as Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk  and Familysearch.org (charges apply).

Surviving census records will normally be found in the country of origin, and not The National Archives.

The only exceptions are the census records of settlers and convicts in New South Wales and Tasmania 1828.These documents can be downloaded free of charge as Digital microfilm. A name-indexed version is also online at Ancestry.co.uk (charges apply) and at Findmypast.co.uk (charges apply).

For the service records of soldiers serving in the Australian and New Zealand army, you will need to contact the National Archives of Australia and Archives New Zealand.

Records of Australasian and New Zealand prisoners of war

For lists of members of the Allied Forces held prisoner in Italian hands, including personnel from the Australian Army and New Zealand Army consult our guide to records of British and Commonwealth prisoners of the Second World War and the Korean War.

Records of Australian land grands

In early colonial Australia, Britain considered land to belong to the Crown because it had been discovered and settled by its subjects. The Crown granted land to companies to organise settlements and sometimes to people as a reward for services. The New South Wales original correspondence, entry books and registers contain requests for land grants which are searchable by name, including permissions to emigrate to Australia.

Consult section 7 of our guide to emigration and emigrants for advice on how to search these records.

Although land grants were nominally made in the name of the Crown, most were made and recorded in the respective country. Consult The Museums of History New South Wales website for research guidance to help you to trace a specific land grant from 1788-1856.

Records of New Zealand land grants

Historic land records for New Zealand, relating to Crown grants, indexes and registers for the deeds system are held by Archives New Zealand.

The National Archives holds some records relating to colonial interaction with the indigenous peoples of Australia and New Zealand.

In general, it would be difficult to use these records to trace individuals, except chiefs or community leaders. However, the records offer some scope for researchers to trace the histories of indigenous communities over time, through colonial military action against indigenous peoples, treaties with European settlers, legal proceedings, maps, and notices in government gazettes.

Conducting searches for the names of individuals or tribes in our catalogue Discovery, will often require attempting multiple different spellings. However, in most cases, to find records with individuals’ names, you would need to do research in our reading rooms with original records directly, as the names won’t be recorded within the catalogue entries for the records.

In common with most of our colonial records, our catalogue reproduces the historical language of the records themselves, even where that language is considered offensive. Identifying records relating indigenous peoples will often require the use of the term’s ‘aborigine’ and ‘natives’, for example. It also requires a creative approach to the spelling of names and place names. For more advice on searching using alternative spellings, consult our Discovery help pages.

These records tend to be found in political, administrative, and visual records and are largely held within records of colonies and dependencies from 1782 and foreign office and foreign and commonwealth office records from 1782

Books available to consult at The National Archives’ Library in Kew include:

Relations in records : a guide to family history sources in the Australian Archives, by Australian Govt. Pub. Service, 1988

Immigration information: a guide to New Zealand holdings of immigration and shipping of interest to family historians, by Archives New Zealand.

You can also try searching The National Archives’ bookshop for related publications which include:

Bound for Australia: A Guide to the Records of Transported Convicts and Early Settlers by David T. Hawkings.

Convicts in the Colonies: Transportation Tales from Britain to Australia by Lucy Williams, 2019.