The Victorian Government Gazette is freely available online from 1836 to 1997. The State Library of Victoria worked with other Victorian Government agencies to digitise this historic reference source as part of its recent slv21 program. Over 300,000 gazettes are now available in full text for researchers and family historians can use them to unlock a treasure trove of information about their ancestors.

The website includes images of every page of every relevant gazette and government notice produced since 1836:

* New South Wales Government Gazette (NSW) 1836 – 1851
* Port Phillip Government Notices (PP) January – 12 July 1843
* Port Phillip Government Gazette (PP) January 1844 – July 1851
* Victoria Government Gazette (VIC) July 1851 – 1997

You can search and browse the indexes that were published at the time to find fascinating insights into the history of Victoria. The breadth of subjects covered by the gazettes is amazing and covers more than Government regulations and unclaimed monies. You can also find information about particular places, lists of people involved in a range of occupations, insolvency notices, licences and patents. Once you find an item of interest you can save or print individual pages as PDF documents for your own reference.

Numerous family historians and other researchers around the world have already discovered the value of this unique record of Victorian history. Is one of your ancestors in the Victorian Government Gazette?

This project was a successful collaboration between the Library, Land Victoria and the Office of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel, the publisher of the Gazette. You can access all Gazettes published after 1997 at the official Victoria Government Gazette website.

This article has 4 comments

  1. There is a useful article giving more information about using Australian government and police gazettes for family history research in the September 2007 issue of Australian Family Tree Connections magazine. It’s available in the State Library of Victoria’s Genealogy Centre.

  2. Above says Gazette is available from 1836 to 1937. I need to research Gazette material around 1953. Help!

    • Hi Jon – You have pointed out a critical typo in my post as our gazette website actually extends to 1997 not 1937! So you can certainly look up 1953. I have now updated the post with the correct year. Thanks for letting me know. Chris

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