Australia Emigration and Immigration

Online Records

 * Australian shipping and passenger records National Library of Australia
 * Genealogical Index To Australians and Other Expatriates In Papua New Guinea at FindMyPast - index & images ($)
 * Australian Contingents To South Africa at FindMyPast - index & image ($)
 * 1786-1849 Australia Convict Ships 1786-1935 at FindMyPast; index & images ($)
 * 1788-1968 Ozships: Australian shipping 1788-1968
 * 1788–1868 Ireland-Australia transportation database National Archives of Ireland
 * Guide to penal transportation records: Ireland to Australia, 1788–1868


 * 1811-1856 Australia, Assisted Emigration at FindMyPast - index & images ($)
 * 1824-1874 Australia Convict Tickets of Leave 1824-1874 at FindMyPast - index & images ($)
 * 1826-1972 Australia, Inward, Outward, & Coastal Passenger Lists 1826-1972 at FindMyPast; index & images ($)
 * 1848-1850 Famine Orphans from Cork to Australia 1848-1850
 * 1848-1850 Earl Grey Irish Female Orphans in Australia Passenger Lists
 * 1850 Irish Orphan Girls who sailed on the Eliza Caroline The “Eliza Caroline” arrived in Port Phillip on 31 March 1850.
 * 1852-1857 List of emigrants, 1852-1857 at FamilySearch Catalog; images only
 * 1873-1924 Alphabetical register of all inward passengers to Albany, 1873-1924 at FamilySearch Catalog; images only
 * 1890-1960 Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960 at FindMyPast; index & images ($); includes those with Destination of Australia
 * 1904-1914 Germany, Bremen Passenger Departure Lists, 1904-1914 at MyHeritage; index & images ($); includes those with Destination of Australia
 * 1946-1971 Free Access: Africa, Asia and Europe, Passenger Lists of Displaced Persons, 1946-1971 Ancestry, free. Index and images. Passenger lists of immigrants leaving Germany and other European ports and airports between 1946-1971. The majority of the immigrants listed in this collection are displaced persons - Holocaust survivors, former concentration camp inmates and Nazi forced laborers, as well as refugees from Central and Eastern European countries and some non-European countries.
 * Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild Choose a volume and then choose Australia under "Listed by Port of Departure" or "Listed by Port of Arrival".
 * Immigrant Ancestors Project

The Irish Ancestor
There are many Indexes in The Irish Ancestor, of convicts requesting wife and children to be sent out to Australia, at the government's expense.
 * Indexed in PERiodical Source Index at FindMyPast ($)
 * FIGRS Index to the The Irish Ancestor ($)
 * WorldCat listing of libraries holding The Irish Ancesor collection
 * The Irish Ancestor 1969-1986 Digital Download ($)

New South Wales

 * 1791-1816 List of convict ships and prisoner's names from Ireland to Sydney, 1791-1816 at FamilySearch Catalog; images only
 * 1816-1825, 1898-1911 New South Wales, Australia, Departing Crew and Passenger Lists, 1816-1825, 1898-1911 at Ancestry; index & images ($)
 * 1828-1842 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index & images
 * 1828-1890 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index & images
 * 1828-1890 Assisted immigrants inwards to Sydney, 1828-1890 at FamilySearch Catalog; images only
 * 1839-1896 Index to Assisted Immigrants 1839-96, Moreton Bay, 1848-1859, Port Phillip 1839-1851
 * 1842-1851 Index to unassisted Immigrants 1842-1851
 * 1846 New South Wales, Australia, Passengers Arriving at Port Phillip, 1846 at Ancestry; index & images ($)
 * 1850-80s Mariners and Ships in Australian Waters - primarily New South Wales, unassisted records from the 1850-80s, incomplete
 * 1853-1900 New South Wales, Australia, Immigration Deposit Journals, 1853-1900 at Ancestry; index & images ($)
 * 1853-1900 New South Wales, Australia, Immigration Deposit Journals, 1853-1900 at Ancestry; index & images ($)

Queensland

 * 1848-1912 Assisted Immigration 1848-1912
 * 1848-1912 Queensland Assisted Immigration 1848-1912 at FindMyPast; index only ($)
 * 1848-1912 Queensland, Australia, Passenger Lists, 1848-1912 at Ancestry; index only ($)
 * 1848-1972 Queensland, Australia, Immigration Indexes, 1848-1972 at Ancestry; index only ($)
 * 1851-1904 Queensland, Australia, Naturalisation Index, 1851-1904 at Ancestry; index only ($)
 * 1852-1885 Queensland Customs House Shipping 1852-1885: Passengers And Crew at FindMyPast; index only ($)
 * 1864-1940 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index only
 * 1885-1917 Queensland, Brisbane Register Of Immigrants 1885-1917 at FindMyPast; index only ($)
 * 1913 Queensland, Australia, Index to Aliens, 1913 at Ancestry; index only ($)
 * State Library of Queensland

Victoria

 * 1839-1871 Index to Assisted British Immigration 1839-1871; index only
 * 1839-1871 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; images only
 * 1839-1923 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index & images
 * 1839-1923 Victoria, Australia, Assisted and Unassisted Passenger Lists, 1839-1923 at Ancestry; index & images ($)
 * 1851-1928 Victoria, Australia, Index to Naturalisation Certificates, 1851-1928 at Ancestry; index & images ($)
 * 1852-1915 Outward Passengers to Interstate, UK, NZ, and Foreign Ports 1852- 1915
 * 1852-1915 Web: Victoria, Australia, Outward Passenger Index, 1852-1915 at Ancestry; index only ($)
 * 1852-1923 Inwards Unassisted Passengers to Victoria 1852-1923 at MyHeritge; index only ($)
 * 1852-1923 Index to Unassisted Immigration to Victoria between 1852 - 1923
 * 1852-1924 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index & images
 * 1852-1924 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index only

South Australia

 * 1836-1841 Emigrants Seeking Free Passage To South Australia 1836-1841 at FindMyPast - index ($)
 * 1836-1849 Chronological list of passenger lists for ships arriving at South Australian ports from overseas 1836-1849 at FamilySearch Catalog; images only
 * 1849-1940 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index & images
 * 1853 - South Australia, Australia, Passenger Lists, 1853 at Ancestry; index & images ($)
 * 1888-1893, 1896-1940 Australia, South Australia, Lists of outgoing passengers departing from Port Adelaide for overseas ports, 1888-1893, 1896-1940 at FamilySearch Catalog; index & images

Tasmania

 * 1829-1957 Tasmania, Australia, Passenger Arrivals, 1829-1957 at Ancestry; index & images ($)
 * 1834-1837, 1841-1887 Tasmania, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1834-1837, 1841-1887 at Ancestry; index & images ($)
 * 1841-1884 Tasmania, Australia, Immigrant Lists, 1841-1884 at Ancestry; index & images ($)
 * 1854-1887 Tasmania, Australia, Immigrant Applications and Bounty Tickets, 1854-1887 at Ancestry; index & images ($)
 * 1920-1943 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; images only
 * 1945-1968 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; images only

Western Australia

 * 1852-1930 Western Australia, Australia, Crew and Passenger Lists, 1852-1930 at Ancestry; index & images ($)
 * 1897-1963 Fremantle, Western Australia, Passenger Lists, 1897-1963 at Ancestry; index & images ($)

Australia Offices to Contact
National Archives of Australia National Office Kings Avenue Parkes ACT 2600 Australia Phone:02 6212 3600
 * Ordering digital copies of records
 * Fact sheets
 * Immigration records - Fact sheet 227
 * Records relating to Italian migration held in Sydney – Fact sheet 100
 * Records relating to Italian migration held in Brisbane – Fact sheet 236
 * Records relating to Italian migration held in Brisbane – Fact sheet 207


 * Research Guides
 * Chinese immigrants and Chinese-Australians in NSW, by Julie Stacker and Peri Stewart, revised 2003
 * More people imperative: immigration to Australia, 1901–39, by Dr Michele Langfield, 1999
 * Good British stock: child and youth migration to Australia, by Barry Coldrey, 1999
 * Safe haven: records of the Jewish experience in Australia, by Malcolm J Turnbull, 1999
 * Chinese–Australian journeys: records on travel, migration, and settlement, 1860–1975, by Paul Jones, 2005
 * Citizenship in Australia: a guide to Commonwealth Government records, by David Dutton, 2000

Finding the Town of Origin in Australia
If you are using emigration/immigration records to find the name of your ancestors' town in Australia, see Australia Finding Town of Origin for additional research strategies.

Australia Emigration and Immigration
"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country. Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Immigration into Australia

 * Between 1788 and 1900 over 1,000,000 people immigrated to Australia. Most of them were from the British Isles, but some were from Europe and Asia.
 * Prior to 1900 there were four classes of immigrants to Australia:


 * Convicts sent to Australia after they were tried and convicted for crimes committed in the British Isles. Tasmania and New South Wales were the states that received most of the convicts before 1830.
 * Bounty immigrants were chosen by Australian colonists to come from the British Isles to Australia.
 * Assisted immigrants came to Australia through the financial assistance of the government, organizations, or wealthy individuals.
 * Paying passengers came to Australia through their own means.

Family History in South Australia



 * South Australia Family History

South Australian Shipping Lists 1836 - 1851
Our aim has been to gather as many South Australian passenger lists as possible between 1836 and the 1860s. To December 2004 we have over 2000, most of which are now available for you to view. We also have a number of passenger lists for ships which arrived in South Australia after the 1860s. A Database has also been created from all these passenger lists currently 52,000 families. We are currently considering how to make this available to you as a searchable database (possible on a CD).

This site also has searchable databases, you will need to have the year and the name of the ship in order to locate passenger lists. There doesn't appear to be a searchable passenger list available.

Passengers in History : An initiative of the South Australian Maritime Museum.

19th Century Australian Shipping
19th Century Shipping

Into South Australia - list of ships only

This site provides resources for family history research on South Australians and includes a searchable database of SA Passenger Lists up to 1850 for more than 1200 voyages.


 * Passenger Lists up to 1848
 * Immigration - why they came to South Australia
 * South Australian Passenger Lists

The ShipsList website, online since August 1999, will help you find your ancestors on ships' passenger lists. We also have immigration reports, newspaper records, shipwreck information, ship pictures, ship descriptions, shipping-line fleet lists and more; as well as hundreds of passenger lists to Canada, USA, Australia and even some for South Africa. Be sure to check the "special projects" section.

We have over 3,000 totally free access web-pages with new databases added regularly, To make best use of your visit, use the Navigation-bars (buttons and text) which are on the top of every page, to help you find your way around.


 * The Ships List
 * German Immigrants to South Australia 1837 to 1860

This is another new project of immigrants arriving in South Australia, from Germany. It is currently up to 1856. These lists have been transcribed from the original passenger lists, by Robert Janmaat of Adelaide, who has generously shared them with The Ships List. Where available, extracts regarding a particular ship have been included, from the Sydney Shipping Gazette and the South Australian Register. The South Australian Government Gazette (return showing deaths on board Emigrant ships 1849 to 5th June 1865) has also been consulted.

note: the original lists were created by an individual unfamiliar with German names, so name spellings from the Biographical index SA (BISA) have been included in brackets. The list below has been compiled from a variety of sources such as the BISA, the Birth-Death-Marriage (BDM) index, the newspaper list (above), online research and has also been cross-checked to a list by Dulcie Love, long time convenor of the Germanic research group at the South Australian Heraldry Genealogy Society (SAGHS). There are a few gaps in this list, but from my experience in researching German passenger lists, I have found that quite a few German settlers migrated from South Australia to Victoria and Queensland. Robert Janmaat

''Clicking on the hyper-links for each year highlighted, will take you directly to the list of ships for that year. Clicking on each ship will give you a passenger list, with in some cases the maiden name of the wife, the list also gives the age of the person. You will find that young adults are listed separately from their parents and siblings.''

Other
Links to other South Australian Resources (clicking on off-site links will open a new browser window)


 * The Digital Panopticon: Tracing convicts from England sent to penal colonies (largely Australia).
 * State Library South Australia shipping and passenger records
 * State Records of South Australia passenger lists - incoming
 * Family History South Australia Barry Leadbeater
 * Bound for South Australia 1836 - 1851  by Di Cummings
 * German Emigrants to South Australia, 1837-1860

Where available, extracts regarding a particular ship have been included, from the Sydney Shipping Gazette and the South Australian Register. The South Australian Government Gazette (return showing deaths on board Emigrant ships 1849 to 5th June 1865) has also been consulted.

Name Search:
Even if you have the basic details, you may still be unable to locate information since some passenger lists have not survived to present day. Over time, a number were lost or accidentally destroyed. Fires caused by lamps and candles were responsible for the destruction of many early South Australian records.

Passenger lists for ships travelling between the colonies are scarce as these records were not required by immigration and remained the property of the shipping companies. As ship travel declined, shipping companies either closed or amalgamated and their records were lost in the process.

The movement of people travelling overland within Australia, as a general rule, was either not recorded or has not survived. The State Library does hold a limited amount of information regarding immigration to some of the other colonies.

Despite these limitations, thousands of immigrant names are available at the State Library for your perusal.

South Australian Shipping and Immigration

Notes and tips:
From the source material (Official passenger lists mainly of immigrants arriving in South Australia under UK assisted passage 1845-86) formerly known as Source 313, then GRG35/48a and now GRG35/48/1 at State Records (SA), this section lists the vessels whose records survive in some form from 1836 to 1886.

The number of voyages with surviving records number just 749 and the material available for each list varies considerably. The material you do locate may include any of the following:

An embarkation list prepared by the agent or emigration agents.

A passenger manifest prepared by the captain.

Certificate of arrival prepared by the immigration officials.

Sundry lists created for other purposes such as fee-payers, land-holders.

Hint: Read the first page header of the shipping list carefully to determine what you are looking at! Problems include:


 * Survival rate of lists is poor.
 * Lists may not be a true indication of the immigrants who actually arrived.
 * Writing is often difficult to decipher.
 * Useful information on origins is rare.
 * Teenagers in families are split off and listed as single men or single women.
 * Departure and arrival date may vary from record to record.
 * Fee-paying passengers usually not recorded.
 * Crew never recorded except in manifests.

Emigration and immigration records, such as the ones previously described, are deposited in Australian national archives, state archives, and other local repositories and archives. Click on the state archive link in the Archives and Libraries article to learn more.

Emigrants Leaving Another Country
Some information about emigrants leaving country were also kept. These outward-bound records include the names of passenger and crew members and sometimes additional information such as an individual’s age, marital status, occupation, and nationality.

Between 1848 and 1850 over 4,000 adolescent female orphans emigrated from Irish workhouses to Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide on the other side of the world. Their emigration has become known as the ‘Earl Grey scheme’ after its principal architect, Earl Grey, Secretary of State for the Colonies in Lord John Russell’s Whig government at the time of the Great Irish Famine.

The Australian Famine Orphan Monument lists lists the names of 400 of the girls brought to the colonies of Australia from Ireland under this scheme.

National Archives of Ireland also has records of Irish who were transported to Australia. Enter 'Australia' in the search box to discover the many subjects covered www.nationalarchives.ie/.

Britain Outward Passenger Lists from Britain On-line 1890-1960. Departure records before 1890 have not survived.

From Germany In an article by Karl Werner Klüber were listed emigrants from Hamburg bound for Australia in the years 1849-1851. The lists of passengers can be found in the periodical, April 1966 page 186, available through the Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah (FHL book number 943 B2gf.)

Greek Immigration to Australia

Books about Emigration and Immigration

 * Vine Hall, Nick. Tracing Your Family History in Australia: a guide (Family History Library Call Number 994 D23V . There are also several source books about how to find emigration and immigration records. These books are listed in the Place Search of the FamilySearch Catalog under:

AUSTRALIA, [STATE] - EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION- HANDBOOKS, MANUALS, ETC.

To find these records at the Family History Library, look in the Place Search of the FamilySearch Catalog for a lengthy listing of sources under:

AUSTRALIA - EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION

AUSTRALIA, [STATE] - EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION

AUSTRALIA, [STATE], [TOWN] - EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION

Indexes of emigration and immigration records are listed in the FamilySearch Catalog under:

AUSTRALIA - EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION - INDEXES

AUSTRALIA, [STATE- EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION - INDEXES]

AUSTRALIA, [STATE], [TOWN] - EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION - INDEXES

A wiki article describing an online collection is found at:


 * Australia, New South Wales, Sydney Index to Bounty Immigrants - FamilySearch Historical Records

For Further Reading

 * Listen to the podcast: Transportation to Australia Over 162,000 British and Irish convicts were transported to Australia between 1787 and 1868. Roger Kershaw explores the reasons behind the policy of transportation and looks at the experiences of the people who were shipped beyond the seas, using case studies from the archives.

Online Resources

 * Oz Ships, Australian Shipping, 1788-1968
 * Australia's First Fleet
 * Australia's Second Fleet
 * Australia's Third Fleet
 * Convict transportation registers database
 * Ireland-Australia transportation database, National Archives of Ireland