Discovering Links: Victorian Sites

A few months ago I started a new theme of posts, ones that I have termed “Discovering Links”. These are posts that lists links that I’ve discovered. It’s not meant to be an exhaustive list, but it is simply ones, generally the not-so-commonly-known ones that I’ve come across in my research, from magazines, or from seeing mentioned on social media.

No matter where I discovered them, I noted them, have been to them, and have found them interesting – so thought I’d share them with you. For this post I have a few relating to Victoria  in Australia.

=== VICTORIAN LINKS ===

Picture Victoria
Similar to what PictureAustralia was, PictureVictoria is a portal site for libraries in Victoria to upload photos to, so they can be all searched from a single site. While the Trove photograph collection is good, if you have Victorian interests, you may wish to check this out as well just in case they have something different.

Geelong and District Family History Group
I don’t expect to generally list genealogy groups and societies, but this one is worth mentioning. The volunteers at the Geelong and District Family History Group are to be commended for their indexing efforts. So far their database has over 1.5 million entries. So for anyone with connections to this region of Victoria, their site is a must.

Victorian Government Gazettes 1836-1997
The State Library of Victoria have digitised the Victorian (and very early New South Wales) Government Gazettes, and have made over 160 years of them available online. Free. You can view images of individual gazette pages by browsing through, or you can search the index.

Eurekapedia
As the name suggests, this is pretty much the site to go to for anything and everything about Eureka Rebellion.

Boyle’s Football Photos
This website is the work of two independent researchers whose objective is to share their “passion for history and provide a friendly resource for family historians, football buffs and others who have an interest in the Charles Boyles photos and more generally in football photography from the 1920’s to 1960’s”. This site has since grown to cover more than just football photos. There’s articles, as well as pages on players, grounds, teams and more. I’ve categorised this link as Victoria – though it could easily be Australia as a whole – but as it started off with Victorian clubs and players there is a dominance of those records listed.

Victorian Heritage Database
For all who are researching family or places in Victoria, this is one for you to bookmark.  The Victorian Heritage Database is a “fully searchable online database containing information about Victorian Heritage Places and Precincts, including statements of significance, physical descriptions, historical information, builder, architectural style, photographs and heritage overlay number”. Type in a place, and everything with that name in it, streets, rives, anything in that suburb will come up.

Victoria Law Reports 1874-1976
The Victorian Law Resources website isn’t one I’d particularly think of visiting for research, but it sure has a heap of useful stuff for the genealogist. They have digitised old (1874-1976) law reports, so you can see them online.