Immigration Records & Guidance

Hello Archive Forum,
I recently applied for citizenship by descent but I need to prove my mother lived in Australia for more than 730 non consecutive days, the trickiest part being that they gave me 28days to do this and I live overseas at the moment. She was resident in Kogarah sometime between 1980-1984 before she left permanently. She worked for AGL, they have no records of that period. Flight/boat manifests in the National Archives stop at 1972. The immigration service states they have no record of her but they searched using her married name instead of her maiden name and I have no way of directly contacting them. Can anyone recommend an archive or service I could use to dig up more information? I could not find a census or voting records from that period. Any tips or tricks would be greatly appreciated!

Hi swmonroe,

National Archives of Australia holds passenger arrival and departure records from 1973-1989. These records are not able to be searched online, but our reference staff can search for passenger records for your mother and send you a copy of any results.

To request a search, please submit a passenger arrival records inquiry.

When you submit the inquiry, please advise that you need both arrival and departure records.

In order to help us search, please provide as much information as possible in your inquiry including:

  • Her name at the time
  • Her date of birth
  • Her port of arrival
  • Her date of arrival and departure as best you know

If you don’t have precise details it’s usually still possible to identify records from this time period, but the more specific you can be the better.

Regards,

Jessie