All at sea – Using the passenger index for Fremantle

Greg Cope, Assistant Director, Brisbane Office, National Archives of Australia

Some of the most requested records at the National Archives of Australia would have to be passenger records, passenger lists or evidence of entry into the country.

The Archives hold a range of records which includes passenger lists, nominal rolls of ships to and from Australia. Passenger cards for incoming and outgoing people both via sea and by air as well as registration of Aliens (non-Australian/British), migration files and others.

Ships nominal rolls and passenger cards can provide evidence of the arrival of a person in Australia and are therefore a valuable source of information for family historians and researchers. Passenger lists are arranged by the date, name of the ship and the port of arrival or departure. Unless you know these details or some of these, your search may be very time consuming.

However, there has been indexing for all passengers with their first arrival point in Western Australia, the port of Fremantle and overseas air arrivals in Perth.

The index is being linked to the digital records which include incoming passenger cards as well as nominal rolls – to access this, first go to RecordSearch available through the National Archives’ website:

https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/SearchScreens/BasicSearch.aspx

You need to then select the Passenger arrivals tab:

https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/SearchScreens/PassengerSearch.aspx

You will note that currently this covers the time period of 1898 to 1966.

Doing a search for a ‘Montefiore’:

Just searched on the surname – result 51 names:

This gives me both the names who arrived by ship with a link to the digitised record, the digital copy link takes you to the exact page – this example is for :

If I select Amy Montefiore who arrived in 1909 – the link will put me to the page of the passenger listing for the Oroya.

You can then enlarge the page to view and print that page or save it as a Jpeg image.

Here is what arrival cards looks like this one is for Grazia Montefiore.

 

EDITORS NOTE: Unfortunately the images within this post are unavailable at this time 24 February 2026.