Who When Where

Feel free to say that you knew all this already but...

For some time I have been relying on BMD indexes from the Australian states (usually). These vary in helpfulness - e.g. one state's detailed data is behind a genealogical society's paywall, while only very basic data is available outside.

Purely by chance - because I don't work on my Australian families very often - I found that Ancestry have three consolidated indexes that are actually easier to use than the state versions. The three are:

• Australia, Birth Index, 1788-1922;
• Australia, Marriage Index, 1788-1950;
• Australia, Death Index, 1787-1985.

Ancestry put the usual coverage caveats on but the resulting three collections are very useful to me because:

• Each collection covers the whole of Australia in one query, rather than one state only;
• The stuff otherwise behind the genealogy society's paywall is accessible to me - it's behind Ancestry's paywall of course, but that's where I am;
• The Victoria death indexes (at least) actually have more data on the Ancestry version than on the state's own index - in the examples I was looking at, Ancestry gives a place where the state's index just says "Victoria".

Note that these Australian BMD indexes sometimes give the exact date and sometimes relatives such as parents.