Victoria Church Records

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Societies

 * The Society of Australian Genealogists, based in Sydney, provides an expert and specialist family history service, and holds microfilms of records of churches of all denominations throughout Australia and overseas. The SAG sells copies of their microfilms to family history societies, historical societies, and libraries.

Historical Background

 * The first British settlement in the area later known as Victoria was established in October 1803 at Sullivan Bay on Port Phillip. It consisted of 402 people (five government officials, nine officers of marines, two drummers, and 39 privates, five soldiers' wives and a child, 307 convicts, 17 convicts' wives, and seven children).They had been sent from England in HMS Calcutta, principally out of fear that the French might establish their own settlement and challenge British rights to the continent.
 * In 1826, a number of convicts and a small force composed of detachments of the 3rd and 93rd regiments landed at Settlement Point (now Corinella), on the eastern side of Western Port Bay. This was abandoned 12 months afterwards.
 * Victoria's next settlement was at Portland in 1834.
 * Melbourne was founded in 1835. The region around Melbourne was known as the Port Phillip District, a separately administered part of New South Wales.
 * In 1838, Geelong was officially declared a town, despite earlier European settlements dating back to 1826.
 * On 1 July 1851, the absolute independence of Victoria from New South Wales was established proclaiming a new Colony of Victoria.
 * Days later, still in 1851, gold was discovered near Ballarat, and subsequently at Bendigo.
 * The colony grew rapidly in both population and economic power. In 10 years, the population of Victoria increased sevenfold from 76,000 to 540,000.
 * Immigrants arrived from all over the world to search for gold, especially from Ireland and China. By 1857, 26,000 Chinese miners worked in Victoria, and their legacy is particularly strong in Bendigo and its environs.
 * The new settlers brought with them their religious traditions, such as Irish Catholicism, Scottish Presbyterianism and English Anglicanism among others. When gold was discovered in late 1851, there were an estimated 9,000 Catholics in the Colony of Victoria, increasing to 100,000 by the time the Jesuits arrived 14 years later.
 * More than 75% of Victorians live in Melbourne. Urban centres outside Melbourne include Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Shepparton, Mildura, Warrnambool, Wodonga and the Latrobe Valley.