A quick mud map of death search resources in Victoria, Australia

Need to knock some relatives from Victoria, Australia off your tree? 
These are the online sources I most frequently use to find deaths in Victoria.

Birth, death and marriage registrations:
Now free to search the indexes! If you find the one you want you can pay to download an image.

• Births, Deaths and Marriages, Victoria

Electoral rolls:
Use the electoral rolls to find out the person’s full name, where they lived, and when they disappeared from the roll (could be when they died).

• Ancestry, Australian Electoral Rolls, 1903-1980 ($)

Death notices:

• Up to 1955 try Trove newspapers.
• Up to the 1980s if the date is known try The Age on Google Newspapers.
• From 1998(?) to today try the Herald Sun Tributes.
• Any time – the Ryerson index could be worth a shot.

Wills and Probate:

• Public Records Office of Victoria, Wills and Probate.
  Indexes up to 2013. Records up to 1925 are digitised and can be downloaded for free with more years coming. I love the PROV.

Cemeteries:
In some cases you will find burial records, in some you will find headstone information. If you can, get both.

I can’t cover every cemetery, but generally speaking…

• Google “Cemetery near place, Victoria” where ‘place’ is where the person lived.
• Look for cemeteries on Australian Cemeteries. It has links to online databases, headstone images sites or contact details for each cemetery.

Burial registers

Some of the bigger search sites in metropolitan areas that cover multiple cemeteries are:

• Southern Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust 
  (includes “The Necropolis” Springvale)
• Greater Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust 
  (includes Fawkner)
• Geelong Cemeteries Trust

Headstones

Headstone lists (photos available on request) for many cemeteries outside of metropolitan areas can be found on Carol's Headstone Photographs.

BillionGraves has enough coverage of Victoria that it’s worth trying.

 

Good luck!