Free access to Australian records

Ancestry.com.au is offering free access to Australian records over the Australia Day holiday weekend. This offer ends Monday night (Aus. time).

 

I have had a most productive weekend making use of this offer. Although I have no Australian roots my husband has a very colourful Aussie background, including a few convicts. The NSW Police Gazette was a mine of information and I discovered that a great uncle had a previously unknown criminal background, another seemed to be a serial victim, there being court cases where he was either maliciously wounded or had been inflicted with grievous bodily harm. Then another had a lot of trouble with watches as he reported on two occasions (years apart) that he had been the victim of theft of an Omega watch (previous research had uncovered his disappearance and bigamous marriage - this disappearance had been attributed his "death" while being a Missionary in Inland Australia)! And so it goes on - I now know where another black sheep uncle lived during and between his several marriages also his occupations - from the Electoral Rolls.

I hope that other Forum members were able to gain some useful information, I now have to put my new-found knowledge into some kind of order!