Ballarat indexes

Public Record Office Victoria series VPRS 296/P0/ Units 1-27

The date range of the Buninyong Petty Sessions Index spans eleven decades recorded in 27 registers. Given that the lifetime of a generation is commonly thirty years, almost four generations are represented from the earliest entry on 13 March 1856 to the last on 8 April 1970. The number of entries can be rounded off to about 25,000. This item is only available on a 2GB USB flash drive which can also be used to store your own personal files.

Genealogists throughout Australia and indeed many other parts of the world will warmly welcome the availability of a comprehensive new index for interments in the Ballarat Cemeteries. Of all early settlements in Australia Ballarat can lay claim to having the richest treasure trove of burial records both in volume and diversity of goldrush immigrants. For the Ballarat Old Cemetery, there are 35,000 burial records in 11,000 graves from May 1856 to May 2005 as well as transcriptions of headstones, many of which have now become unreadable or no longer exist. The names of some pre-1856 burials are known, such as that on an 1853 wooden headstone. This wonderful work began in 1973 when Ballarat Historical Society members, Hazel Williams and Lois Reynolds first recorded information from selected headstones in the Ballarat Old Cemetery. The work was continued in the 1980s by the Ballarat Group of the Genealogical Society of Victoria and cemetery records were computerised by the Ballaarat General Cemeteries Trust. This resulted in the publication by the GSV of the first Ballarat burial index on microfiche in 1989. Graeme Reynolds, son of Lois, has brought the Ballarat Old Cemetery transcription record up to date for this new publication by including new memorials on old graves erected as recently as June 2006.

BALLARAT EAST RATE BOOKS INDEX VPRS 7258/P1 Units 1-10 1872-1882 plus Unit 40 1911-12 ISBN 978-0-9751359-3-8 In total there are close to 40 000 entries transcribed from eleven rate ledgers by a team of volunteers from Ballarat & District Genealogical Society Inc. over a period of four and a half years. Launched during Ballarat Heritage Weekend on Saturday 8th May 2010 at the Mining Exchange, Lydiard Street North, Ballarat.