“Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) holds an extraordinary array of records created by the Victorian Government from the mid-1830s to now.”

PROV has some online collections and resource guides that direct users to online and on-site collections. Some topics include:

Aboriginal Records

Births, Deaths, and Marriages

“PROV only holds the indexes to registered Births, Deaths and Marriages, not the certificates. The indexes are not online – you can access them on our reading room computers.” Access them free, online at the Victoria Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

Cemeteries

“Cemeteries are often run by a cemetery trust, and members are responsible for keeping records about the cemetery and who is buried where. …We hold only a few records of cemeteries, most cemetery trusts still hold their records. Today there are 400 cemetery trusts with responsibility for cemeteries, across Victoria. …You can search TROVE by the person’s name and approximate year of death to find notices posted in the larger newspapers across Australia to identify where that person was buried.” Australian Cemetery and Cemetery Fees Search

Census Records

“Censuses were conducted by the Colony or State of Victoria in 1854, 1857, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891 and 1901. None are known to exist within the PROV Collection. According to the State Library of Victoria guide to early census records, surviving returns were pulped in 1892. …The responsibility for conducting censuses was taken over by the Commonwealth of Australia from 1905. Census records for Victoria from this date were destroyed until 1996 when households were given the option of having their returns preserved by the National Archives of Australia (NAA).”