Emigration/Immigration 

P&O first entered the business of transporting emigrants from the UK to Australia with the acquisition of Blue Anchor Line in 1910.  Orient Line also carried emigrants to Australia, while the New Zealand Shipping Company carried them further south to New Zealand.  As neither P&O nor any of its subsidiary companies regularly carried emigrants to Canada or South Africa, they are not included in this guide. 

Records in UK archives contain information regarding the outward portion of the emigration process only in the form of outward passenger lists.  The departing information can be consulted on www.ancestorsonboard.com (see previous section) which will provide the emigrant’s name, port of departure, destination and date of departure.  For arrival information in destination countries, it is best to refer to their local and national archives as UK repositories would hold no records on their behalf. 

Australia

As a rule of thumb for Australian records, including passenger lists for arrivals prior to 1923, are held at the state archives or records office in the State in which port they arrived.   Records for anyone (including children) who entered Australia post 1923 - even those who migrated from Britain to Australia under assisted passage schemes after 1950 - are held at the National Archives Australia in series A1877.  The bulk of the records at the Archives include information on the following categories of emigrants:

• alien (non-citizen) registration
• migration applications
• case files
• migrant selection documents
• migrant accommodation records
• naturalisation (citizenship) records
• passenger records
• passport records
• policy files
• visas and entry/exit documents

Archival sources relating to emigration, other than those held by the National Archives Australia, can be found at the various State Archives and Public Record Offices, the Noel Butlin Archives Centre at the Australian National University, and major libraries in each state such as the National Library of Australia in Canberra, the Mitchell Library in Sydney, the State Library of Victoria, the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, and the J S Battye Library in Perth.

New Zealand

The majority of information on New Zealand emigration is contained in passenger lists which exist sporadically as far back as the 1840s, but were kept more systematically from 1910 to 1973.  These lists are held in Wellington at the office of the Social Security Department, however, inward passenger lists from Britain 1884-1910 are held at the Auckland branch.  Alternatively, it is suggested to contact the Alexander Turnbull Library for records at Wellington.