Find your ancestors in Queensland births 1829-1919

What can these records tell me?

By searching through these transcripts, you may uncover the following information about your ancestor:

  • Full name
  • Registration year
  • Birth date
  • Father’s first name(s)
  • Mother’s first name(s)
  • Mother’s last name – occasionally, this field is populated with notes from the record pertaining to birth and registration dates.
  • Registration number, which can be used to order the birth certificate from the Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths, and Marriages. A link to their ordering page is located in the Useful Links & Resources section. Certificates often include additional information, such as place of birth, father’s occupation, and the name of a witness present at the birth. Please note that there is an ordering fee.

Discover more about these records

There are over 930,000 births in these records.

Registration for births, marriages, and deaths was not mandatory in Australia until March 1856. As Queensland was not made a separate colony from New South Wales until 1859, some events may have been registered in New South Wales. Additionally, you may want to search a range of dates considering that births may have been registered at a later date from when the actual birth occurred. For example, if a birth occurred in December of a given year, it might not have been registered until January of the following year.

European explorers first visited Queensland in 1606. By the 1700s, with the introduction of smallpox by European settlers, the Aboriginal Australian population was significantly diminished. Around the turn of the century, the White Australia Policy, which was in actuality a series of policies, passed on the heels of the 1901 Federation of Australia. This policy was aimed at steering the development of Australia in a strictly Western direction in relation to culture, economy, and society, much to the exclusion of those from Asia and the Pacific Islands. This saw a drop in Queensland’s Pacific Islander population, significantly the Melanesian population that had been treated as indentured servants on the sugar cane fields of Queensland. These policies were eventually dissolved between 1949 and 1973.

Queensland enjoyed its own gold rush in 1867 after James Nash’s discovery of gold and a second gold rush in 1873 at Palmer River. Both caused a surge in population and impacted strongly the economy of Queensland.