New immigration records at FamilySearch

Family Search Record Search has added new records including New Zealand immigration passenger lists, 1871 - 1915

As well as N.S.W. Index to Bounty Immigrants Arrivals, 1828–1842

Victorian passenger lists on Ancestry

Victorian shipping lists have recently been added to Ancestry. Assisted and Unassisted Passenger Lists, 1839–1923.

This data collection contains unassisted and assisted immigrant passenger lists to Victoria, Australia for various years between 1852 and 1923. The ships were coming from UK ports, New Zealand ports, and other foreign ports. “Unassisted immigrants” are individuals whose passages were not subsidized or paid for by another person or through another agency.

Ancestry can be accessed via the library website on all PCs in all branch libraries.

New Zealand to Australia Stories

You are invited to participate as a subject in the research project ‘New Zealand Immigration to Australia: late 1960s to early 1990s’.

The aim of this project is to investigate the personal experiences of New Zealanders who migrated to Australia from the late 1960s to early 1990s. Areas of particular interest are the reasons for migration, preparations for the trip, the participants’ trans-Tasman connections both before and after migration, the experience of settling in to Australia, possible return migration to New Zealand and the role of hindsight in evaluating memories of migration.

The project is being carried out a requirement for a PhD by Rosemary Baird under the supervision, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Please email: Rosemary Baird kiwisinaustralia@gmail.com

New Victorian Probate and Shipping indexes

PROV's volunteers have been busy again this year preparing the next instalment of the outwards immigration index 1887-1896 adding another 290,348 names to the index (total range now 1852 to 1896 with 797,460 outward passengers named). The volunteers are continuing to index the series which ends in 1923.
Volunteers from the Victorian Association of Family History Organisations (VAFHO) and FamilySearch have completed the first stage of a collaborative project with PROV to index probates in Victoria. The first stage 1841-1925 is now online and allows researchers to search for wills and probates by family name, place, occupation and date and then to link to the digitised
image of the will and/or probate file. There are 214,545 names in the index and in 2008 the FamilySearch volunteers digitised 4,724,965 pages of will and probate files which are progressively being made available to the website free of charge.
Both the shipping and probate indexes are available online (see links under New Features) and also via the How Do I? section on the home page.
Source: News from Public Records Office Victoria (eNewsletter)

New Microfiche at Diamond Valley

New microfiche available at Diamond Valley library "Immigration to Victoria: registers of assisted immigrants 1839-1871" from the PROV will be available shortly for researchers to use.

Bonegilla 60th anniversary

The Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre accepted its first 839 residents sixty years ago on December 8, 1947. Are you one of the original 839? Or one of the many other former Bonegilla residents? Or a family member or friend of a former resident? The Centre would love to hear from you as it prepares to celebrate its anniversary in December.

From Friday 7 until Sunday 9 December 2007, Albury Wodonga will be celebrating the role Bonegilla has played in shaping the multicultural face of the nation. Plans include a weekend of cultural activities including arts, film, stories, special guests, games, site tours, music, dance and of course sharing food. Friday and Saturday will feature a range of activities in Albury and Wodonga, and Sunday will bring everybody together again at Block 19 for a gala Festivale day.

On Wednesday November 7 Diamond Valley library will present a session for family history researchers on the Calling Australia Home program at the National Archives of Australia. They keep a vast collection of records. If your family migrated in the twentieth century and may have spent time at Bonegilla come along and learn some tips to help document your family history.

Hamburg Ships arriving in Melbourne 1857

The Wendish Heritage Society are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the 1857 immigrant pioneers in Melbourne who arrived on the Hamburg ships:
La Rochelle,
Neumulen,
Cesar Godeffroy,
Carl,
Dorothea,
Gottingen,
Manila,
Hermann
Sverge

If you think that your ancestor arrived on one of these ships please email the local history librarian for a list of names or visit The Wendish Heritage Society of Australia