Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
South Australian Family History & Genealogy
Q. How do I obtain a full official copy of my own birth or marriage certificate?
A. Check out these links which will take you to an appropriate page of the Births, Deaths & Marriages Registration Office.
Q. How do I obtain a full copy of my ancestor's birth, marriage or death certificate?
A. Check out these links which will take you to an appropriate page of the Births, Deaths & Marriages Registration Office, but note that there may be privacy conditions limiting availability.
Q. How much does a birth, marriage or death certificate cost?
A. Check out these links which will take you to an appropriate page of the Births, Deaths & Marriages Registration Office.
Q. How do I find where someone was buried?
A. Read our short article on searching for SA cemetery burials.
Q. Where can I find census records for South Australia?
A. There is only one SA census with surviving details — 1841. Search our 1841 census database which gives arrival information of people in the census. Copies of the original census records are available for viewing at the State Library of SA and State Records of SA.
Q. Why don't some of your passenger lists have any information from official lists?
A. In many cases, no official passenger list has survived. Search our shipping & passenger list database which gives arrival information from many sources including the official lists that still exist. Copies of surviving original records are available for viewing at the State Library of SA and State Records of SA.
Q. Why are the dates in your databases given in yyyy-mm-dd format?
A. We use the international standard date format as defined in ISO 8601:2000, Representation of dates and times. It is also important that our database search results can be readily sorted into chronologically increasing or decreasing order as well as alphabetic order. This can be achieved most readily with dates in international format, the digits being in strictly decreasing order of significance, as with all numbers. Also, this format is consistent with dates given in the SAGHS/Digger indexes to South Australian bmd registrations.