The records of colonial Australia, made searchable
Millions of colonial gazette pages, notices and lodged records — OCR-corrected, indexed, and linked back to the original page. Search the archive, add to it, or ask it a question.
What are you looking for?
Search is free. Unlock corrected text, cropped scans and citations only when needed.
Free pages every month. Choose to add your record to the public index — that's how the archive grows.
What do you want to know?
Answers cite their sources — every claim links to the gazette page it came from.
Upload a PDF, scan, photo or handwritten page. We'll return corrected text and a fully searchable PDF — and pull out the people, places and dates inside. With your permission, those join the public index: preserved, searchable and citable for everyone.
Upload a recordSearch works when you know what you're looking for. When you don't, ask — the assistant reads across the indexed record and cites the exact page for every claim it makes.
Included with research plans — every answer arrives with its sources pinned beneath, and the assistant won't claim what the record can't support.
Names, aliases, occupations, appointments, licences, insolvencies, rewards
e.g. Thomas Evernden, police magistrate Search people →Towns, parishes, counties, land sales, leases, local notices
e.g. Bathurst, County of Roxburgh Search places →Companies, partnerships, societies, tenders, institutions
e.g. Bank of New South Wales Search organisations →Crimes, rewards, absconders, estates, probate, public notices
e.g. £200 reward, Bathurst, 1836 Search events →Or browse by record type — land grants, convict records, insolvencies, licences, mining leases and more →
Dense columns, worn print, even handwriting — every page gets multiple independent readings, reconciled word-by-word.
Each notice is classified, and its people, places, dates and organisations pulled out as searchable entities.
“R. Thompson”, “Robt. Thompson” and “Robert Thompson” are grouped — cautiously, and always shown as possible matches.
Every result carries its issue, date and page, and unlocks the exact cropped region of the original scan.
Every result is free to find. You unlock the corrected text and the cropped scan only when you need them.
A reward of £200 and a conditional pardon offered after Thomas Evernden, Police Magistrate of Bathurst, was attacked and twice fired upon at the Bay of Biscay on the Government Road.
Half-acre allotment at Berrima (No. 1, Section 3) put up to auction, applied for by George Williams at £2 per acre — bounded north by Church-hill, west by Argyle-street.
John Smith, per “Surry”, errand-boy of Manchester, absconded from A. K. M'Kenzie of Bathurst. One of many same-name entries — review the original before treating as one person.
Every claim, traceable
Two streams feed the index: public archive material, and records that contributors choose — explicitly — to share. Either way, we help you locate, correct, classify and cite what ordinary scanned-PDF search walks straight past, and we don't ask you to take our word for anything.
Uploaded material joins the public index only under the terms shown and accepted at upload — never quietly.
Every extracted fact links to its issue, date, page and the exact cropped region of the original scan or lodged document.
OCR confidence, unclear readings and possible-but-unproven matches are marked as exactly that.
Every contributed record is preserved and made findable — knowledge that would otherwise stay locked in private folders.
Search records, upload free pages and preview results before paying a cent — you pay only for deeper evidence and bigger workloads.
Find matching records and preview summaries, entities and confidence levels — no account needed.
Turn scans and handwriting into corrected text and searchable PDFs, with monthly limits. Higher limits on paid plans.
Unlock scans and corrected text, build research files, export citations, and put harder questions to the Record.
Free uploads help grow the public index — every contributed record preserves more of the historical record.