Dear John, I know of 2 sites that have Australian records. One is www.worldvitalrecords.com They have the Victorian Post Office Directory for 1904 and 1914 and the have the Victorian Police Gazettes from 1861 thru to about 1891. There are loads of other Aussie resources there as well in a similar vein for other states. They have Melbourne Directories from 1854 thru to 1893. These records seem to have come from the "Archive CD" collection. Ancestry has some wonderful state based early federal electoral rolls (except SA for some reason). These have really helped my research as they are all searchable at the same time, great for finding ancestors who moved out of Victoria. It is the closest thing you can find for a "census" for Australia that is easily searchable. They also have some early directories such as Sands and convict records but I think some or perhaps all of the convict records are available with the different State Archive services (I know NSW State Records and the equivilant for Tassie has a lot of convict records). You should be able to see what they have by going to the Ancestry web site and clicking on "see all databases" and use Australia as your keyword. Of course Ancestry has a huge range of British , US and Canadian records but access to these depends on which sort of subscription you buy. I started out with access just to the British section but now find it is worth my while having a "World" subscription. Findmypast has shipping records from 1890 onwardsthat include ships leaving England and coming to Australia (and elsewhere). Other subscription sites I have used each have something "unique" about them. The "Origins" site has fully searchable Griffith's evaluations for Irish Ancestors and their British section has Boyds marriage index as well as indices for pre 1858 Wills. "The Genealogist" has many of Phillimores marriage transcriptions . All of those sites offer either full or partial British census collections. None of the sites has Australian BDM data. You need to either access those online (if available) or at your local/state library or local genealogical society. You can of course buy the indices but it gets to be horrendously expensive to get the complete set. HTH Maree in Adelaide John Thomas Martin wrote: >Hi To All Members, > >Can anyone tell me if sites such as "Australian Ancestors.com or Ancestry.com" or similar have what they say they do. Some of them claim to have loads of data bases and how relevant is the information to Australia? > >Can you also inform me which is the best of these sites before subscribing and parting with my hard earned dollars. > >TIA, > >John > >------------------------------- >To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > > >