Victoria, Australia Historical BMD Indexes

+16 votes
1.5k views

The Historical Indexes for birth, marriages and deaths for Victoria Australia can be viewed or downloaded in a number of formats from Archive.Org

https://archive.org/download/AustraliaVictoriaBmdHistoricalIndex_104

I found txt to be the best but takes a fast internet connection or patience. Which ever you have most of.

Births https://ia802706.us.archive.org/28/items/AustraliaVictoriaBmdHistoricalIndex_104/aus_vic_bmd_births.txt

Marriages https://ia902706.us.archive.org/28/items/AustraliaVictoriaBmdHistoricalIndex_104/aus_vic_bmd_marriages.txt

Deaths https://ia902706.us.archive.org/28/items/AustraliaVictoriaBmdHistoricalIndex_104/aus_vic_bmd_deaths.txt

in The Tree House by Living Daly G2G6 Mach 5 (50.7k points)
These days I prefer to just use the official government site:

http://www.bdm.vic.gov.au/home/family+history/search+your+family+history/
The Government site dosent provide provide full scope of the BMD's and its not totally free. It also does not go back to 1839, It all depends really on how serious a genealogist you are, whether you want to miss nothing or want to be shown something.
Thanks for this info!
I've compared the new site (which is now totally free) with what I can get from the CD's (Pioneer Index, etc) and they are comparable.
As i have said and will repeat. The Victorian BMD site does not provide full scope, ei: religious denomination, parish and church for marriages. all you get on the BMD site is birth that was in Victoria and importantly the Reg No which cross refs with the indexes i mention and there you can get the missing info without having to purchase the Victorian Pioneer Index CD's or the certificate from the Government. The Index i mention is also a legitimate source you can add to a profile with a hot link (dont forget to mention the Reg No) The Pioneer CD's cant be accessed from WikiTree nor can you link to the info on the Government site.
Do you know where these files came from? I'm curious to know where the information has been sourced.

Yes Derek. Its the Victorian Pioneer Index, one of 7 historical Victorian indexes. 

  • Pioneer Index 1836-1888
  • Federation Index 1889-1901
  • Edwardian Index 1902-1913
  • Great War Index 1914-1920
  • Marriage Index 1921-1942
  • Death Index 1921-1985
  • Marine Births, Deaths and Marriages Index 1853-1920

The records are from the Public Records Office Victoria. Some of the indexes are sold by various genealogy companies under their own label. You can get dates and the Reg No's from

http://www.bdm.vic.gov.au/home/family+history/search+your+family+history/

It a combination of the Pioneer Index and you can also search the Marine Birth Deaths and Marriage Index but it lacks in detail

I do too, Rosemary.  Has everything I need.  And its totally free.

'As i have said and will repeat.'

Eric, that could be taken as being a tad short and rude.  Not saying that was the intention.  I think Rosemary is entitled to her differing opinion.  Thank you for the resource leads. Regards, Ken

Thank you. I will try these. I had been using the government site and didn't know about these indexs.
The new Victorian BMD site was unusable for a while, but now works.  It is meant to be a lookup to buy a certificate.  Authentication is required.  (Tas has it too.  They claim it is a precaution against identity theft.)  I was asked to get a historical marriage cert for a friend, from her mother's family.  With a person hundreds of km away, and two changes of name by marriage, I almost gave up.  Thankfully, because the event was more than 75 years ago, my own login was all they required.
I've tried it twice in the past 24 hours. It's still borked.

https://www.bdm.vic.gov.au/research-and-family-history/search-your-family-history is working fine for me in opera browser, IE, and edge. 

Thank you for these links and to all who have contributed below. I was able to download these files and load them into a PostgreSQL database for better searching, it opens up more avenues than the single query search available on the BDM web site. Beware that from 1896 there are extra duplicate records in the dataset; normally each marriage has 2 records with the same registration number, one for each party. This average rises to 2.5 from 1896 onwards with some events having 4 or more records with slight variations. There are also 81 records post 1942, which is supposedly the end of the series.

I've just referenced this post of Eric's in another G2G thread, so I thought it was worth drawing general attention to it. Thanks very much Eric! These index files can be invaluable to anyone following genealogy in Victoria, Australia, who would like to write computer code to search or analyse them.

7 Answers

+12 votes
 
Best answer
Thanks Eric.  I've added a link to this question to a few of the categories that list Australian resources.  [[:Category: Australia Genealogy Resources]], [[:Category: Australia Research Assistance]], [[:Category: Australia Genealogy Resources]] and [[:Category: Birth, Death, and Marriage Records, Australia]].
by Veronica Williams G2G6 Pilot (213k points)
selected by Living Daly
Not sure why the links aren't working in my answer, but they do on the categories!
There is a new website, which is completely free to search.

https://online.justice.vic.gov.au/bdm/indexsearch.doj
Andrew, John: When it's working (rarely) they still charge for the full record. All you get for "free" is an index entry and a year, very scant data indeed.
+10 votes
Thanks Eric. I'm always happy to have more options for BDM Sources. I can't always find the detail I'm looking for so appreciate the info.
by Eileen Strikwerda G2G6 Mach 1 (16.7k points)
+10 votes

Eric, thank you. Few of us have the CDs and paying per record from the Vic BDM site always seemed ridiculous to me.

I've made this resource available to the new Victorian Gold Rush - GEDmatch Ancestor Project. Much appreciated!

by Robert Judd G2G6 Pilot (133k points)
The site claimed that the 99c fee paid for "extras."
What 99c fee? Vic Gov't charges $20.00 + GST for an uncertified historical certificate, if you print it yourself.
In the days before this new Web site, we had to pay 99c a time to see the details of any search result.  That was on top of the fee for a certificate of any kind.
+7 votes
Is this a similar situation for the other states? Do you have links for their indexs too?
by Ben Molesworth G2G6 Pilot (161k points)

hi    Benjamin Molesworth        try for WA = https://bdm.justice.wa.gov.au/_apps/pioneersindex/default.aspx?uid=6652-1357-6884-3383 =  and      

refresh on = Searching WA Online Indexes  =  cheers

Strangely enough, I think I have only 2 or 3 times had an acestor have an event in WA. But thank you. Hopefully that helps others too. Any other states??

 - yes - = https://www.genealogysa.org.au/resources/online-database-search = - -

under = Resources =

I'm sorry John, but both of those links miss the point of the conversation above, which is that there is the government sites, which I know for each state, that offer limited information, and try and get you to purchase the rest of the information; and then there is a site that gives the full information for free.

I do know all the sites for the states, which charge for the full certificate. The only full database that I have come across for free so far, is for the ACT, which is a downloadable file with a complete record of all BDMs.

I was only aware of the official Victorian site that give limited details to get you to purchase certificates, I was unaware of the complete downloadable lists, which I would like to know if the complete list are available for other states.
To be honest, I'm finding limited extra information in the index compaired to the regular site. Extra detail for locations.
+7 votes
So if you're looking for details for a birth up to and including the very early records of 1854, the site Eric suggested gives the year (but not the date), number, gender, name of child, names of parents, place (sometimes abbreviated), denomination and parish. It looks like it comes from baptismal records.

From 1854 onwards, when civil registration must have come in, the details are the same as what can be found on the government website, so I wouldn't bother with the archive list.

I haven't checked the marriage or death lists, but assume they are the same. In summary:

pre-1854, I'll use the archive list;

1854 or later, I'll use the govt searchable website.
by Wendy Scott G2G6 Mach 3 (30.9k points)

As far as I can see, the content of the birth file and what's on the website are the same. For example, the early birth record 12228/1837 is on the website. Have you found a specific example in the file that's not on the website, Wendy? In some cases the files do have additional details like locations that don't seem to be on the website. Edited to add: Sorry Wendy, I missed your point about the denomination and parish details.

But the beauty of the files is that you can search them with computer programs. They're too large and unwieldy for general use by hand.

In important cases, I do tend to look up what I find in the files on the website too, just for confirmation. This is easy because all you have to enter is the registration number and the type of event.

Wendy, The marriage records include place of birth for each of the people being married, which is data you won't find at VIC BDM.
Where, Rob? Place of birth would be useful, but I'm just not seeing it, either pre- or post-1854.

Unfortunately it's not so for each person. Place of marriage birth is in the eighth comma-separated field, but more than half of them are blank.

To be precise, of the 1,892,766 marriage records, only 731,395 or 38.6% contain the marriage birth place.

The birthplace data was consistently collected between 1866 and 1912. Prior to 1866 many entries are derived from church records, and they didn't take down such details.

Post-1912 this isn't such a big issue, since most people after that date were born in Australia. Also, a word of caution: unless you have local knowledge, the place name abbreviations can be very deceptive. Ess can be Essex or Essendon as an example, although it's fairly obvious that a 35yo man being married in 1866 wasn't born in Essendon, which didn't yet exist at his DOB.

Some entries have multiple possibilities though, and are so ambiguous that I wouldn't try to interpret them; this may be why they don't show them at all at VIC BDM.
https://bdmabbreviations.steveparker.id.au/

can clear up what some of the abbreviations mean.

Well that site no longer works.
Thanks Jim.
+6 votes
Please use this site sparingly. It was created from the digger disks so the errors that were on the disks are also repeated on the site
ago by Amanda Myers G2G6 Mach 5 (50.3k points)
+5 votes
Oh this is great, I have been getting so frustrated with the 100 entry limit, and having to play around with dates, and remember where I am up to to re run a search for the next time slot. This is fantastic. Thank you!
ago by Kylie Haese G2G6 Mach 8 (87.9k points)

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