Researching family and friends to build a story of their life and military service sounds like a daunting task. Well, think again. With a little computer skill and some perseverance, it can be quite easy and is usually a very satisfying experience.
Here are a few pointers as to where to start:
Firstly though, it helps tremendously if you have as much personal detail as possible to narrow you search parameters. Things like mother/father, a year of an event and in the case for military records, a service number. Yu may find the following template useful. So, let’s begin.
Once you have filled in as much as you can, you might like to start with personal background. All states have them, however let’s look at NSW Birth, Deaths & Marriages (NSW BDM). By visiting: Births, Deaths and Marriages search (nsw.gov.au) you will see the following screen:
You will note that you can only publicly search records that are- for births are greater than 100 years ago. For marriages, more than 50 years ago and for deaths, more than 30 years ago. Anything inside these timeframes remains confidential.
By playing around with the search parameters, you can find the year of a birth, marriage or death, parents or siblings or where any of these events were registered (as opposed to where they happened to take place. If you wish, for a fee you can order the certificates to find the exact dates and place of the events.
Next, Military records. These are held at the National Archives of Australia (NAA). By going to Name search | RecordSearch | National Archives of Australia (naa.gov.au) you can begin your journey to find your loved one’s records. A family name, given name and a theatre of operations will give a list of possible candidates, but a service number helps reduce the list of possible candidates to the one person you are after.
From the above screen, clicking on the digitised item icon for the required name will open the service records of your loved one. The records contain many things. For example: enlistment records, next of kin details, medical information postings, unit details and much, much more. These pages can be downloaded or printed. By listing events by dates double spaced on a word document allows the opportunity to begin building your story.
Other places to search is the Australian Virtual Memorial website for loved one’s possible records, unit history etc. Virtual War Memorial | Australian Soldiers, Memorials and Military (vwma.org.au)
or in the case of a death during military service, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website: Find war dead | War graves search | CWGC
Of course there is always the websites, Ancestry or My Heritage, however these require subscriptions. If you visit the local library though, they have a library edition of Ancestry which can be used for free. For a more comprehensive list of resources go to: Research an Australian veteran’s war service – Anzac Portal (dva.gov.au)