State Records of South Australia

The State Records of South Australia is the repository for records generated by State Government Departments.

Access to the collection is by visiting the reading room at the State Library North Terrace Adelaide. Access is available Monday to Friday and first Saturday of each month from 10:00am to 5:00pm. The collection is held at Cavan and so there is a lengthy wait for records if you do not pre-order by the website ot telephone.

Oversized and fagile items have to be viewed at the Gepps Cross repository by appointment only at 115 Cavan Road. This site is is poorly served by public transport.

The extensive collection is organised into series reflecting the government departments that generated the material. Often researchers will need the services of an archivist to work their way through the system which can be quite difficult to grasp. Like all major archives, the collection is based on the origins of the material rather than its subject as with a library and that may mean searching a number of series to obtain the material sought.

A brief summary of the holdings has been published in Ancestors in Archives which is a very useful publication for planning your visit.

There is no charge for access to the collections but there are copying charges.

Material relating to South Australian research of particular interest to family historians includes:

• Almanacs, Directories and Gazetteers
• Biographical indexes
• Burial registers (some)
• Electoral Rolls (State)
• Gaol records
• Government Correspondence files
• Government Employee records
• Government Publications
• Hospital records
• Inquests, Coronial Inquiries and Burial Orders
• Insolvency records
• Land Ownership and Occupation records
• Local government records
• Pre-registration BDM records
• School records
• Shipping records
• 1841 Census