Wills, Probates and Inquests

Looking through last Will and Testament documents are a good source of information on descendants, property and locations. 

At some stage almost all Wills must pass through the Australia Court system and thus become an official court record to be stored in perpetuity. Where no Will has been left (intestate estates) usually next of kin apply for estate administration, documents of which also complement the official records.  Many early Wills are now online in index of full document form.  Also, this list has links to inquest documents and coroners reports.

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Australian Capital Territory

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Queensland

Queensland Archives has compiled indexes of their archival records. Use these links to get to the page and search the index database by name.

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New South Wales

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Victoria

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Western Australia

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South Australia

Some useful websites dedicated to South Australian history are now defunct, making it difficult to search for records online.  The South Australian official archives are also not online however some of their records exist on third party sites such as FamilySearch and Ancestry (both require logins). We are endeavouring to expand our South Australian online records collection at our data site, Gendata.com.au - please visit regularly as we expand our SA collection - it's free and does not require an account. In the meantime you may find the following sites useful.

  • The Manning Index of South Australian History The Index contains many thousands of references to South Australian newspaper and magazine stories for the years 1837 to 1937. It also includes extensive selected text from the indexed publications, other primary and secondary sources and numerous extracts from Mr Manning's own writings.

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Tasmania

  • Probate search The Tasmanian Supreme Court Probate Registry deals with all applications for Grants of Probate and Administration of deceased estates in Tasmania.
  • Inquests held in the archives
  • Wills held in the archives

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Northern Territory

The Nothern Territory Department of Arts and Museums is responsible for the Northern Territory Archives. A list of collections in the archive is available for download in PDF format (warning: 250+ pages) which can then be searched offline.  The archives can also be searced online using the "Archives Navigator" service although it is not straight forward and no indexes are available. 

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National

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[Last update August 2024]