Hi Listers, Thank you to everyone who replied. The news has made me very happy. The parents had 4 children but only one was born after registration, Emma Telling. I have never been able to find a marriage record for the parents and finding the birth record in the BDM indexes last night was my last hope of finding the mothers maiden name. I've been looking for over 5 years so you can imagine how excited I am. Four years ago a gentleman in England checked the indexes for me but couldn't find her so I assumed!!! that she had missed registration. It turns out the spelling on the indexes is different than the "normal" spelling for the family (Tilling) and using a "wildcard" search on the Free BDM index found her. I used E* & T* and there she was in the right area and in the right quarter (I had her baptism record). So once again thank you everyone for your replies. Happy hunting everyone. Rosemary M Chalmers Darwin NT Australia rosechal@octa4.net.au