The central office of the Department of Defence was located at Victoria Barracks in Melbourne from Federation in 1901 until 1962 when most of its functions were relocated to Canberra. As a consequence, the Melbourne office of the National Archives of Australia holds a large collection of Defence records that were created prior to the Department's relocation. These consist mainly of records which at times fell under the responsibility of separate Departments of the Army and the Navy, but also include early central administration records that may be found among records series primarily dealing with Army or Navy matters.

See Fact Sheet 134 – Colonial defence personnel records held in Melbourne for information about records of the Victorian colonial defence forces, including the Volunteer (militia) and Permanent forces, the Mounted Rifles and Victorian Rangers, the Naval Brigade and the Permanent Naval force. The records, most of which are available as microfilm, include periodic returns of units, registers, muster rolls and enrolment records, and contain the names of serving members accompanied by personal or service details.

There is a large collection of policy, operational and administrative records of the Army (1901–62) and Navy (1911–59) held in series usually described as 'correspondence files' or 'correspondence series'. These series cover the broad range of matters dealt with by the Service Departments including personnel and employment conditions, works, finance, and supply and equipment issues. The indexes and registers for these series are complex and use of them can be time consuming. Correspondence series fall into a number of categories such as 'general', 'confidential', 'secret' and 'top secret'. See Fact Sheet 135 – Army administrative records held in Melbourne and Fact Sheet 137 – Navy administrative records held in Melbourne.

Service personnel records held in Melbourne include Army pay records, Boer War, Citizen Military and Permanent Military Force dossiers as well as a small quantity of Navy personnel records. They include individual personnel records for serving members as well as information relating to appointments and postings, leave, honours and conditions of service. See Fact Sheet 136 – Army service records and Fact Sheet 138 – Navy service records held in Melbourne.

There are several significant collections of personnel records of Australian service held by other offices of the National Archives or by other agencies. Details of these are provide below.

Most Defence central office records and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) or Department of Air records were transferred to Canberra in 1959. All requests for these records should be directed to either the Archives' Canberra office or the Department of Defence in Canberra, see Fact Sheet 32 – RAAF service records and Fact Sheet 97 – Records held by Office of Air Force History, Canberra.

Records are generally available once they are over 30 years of age. Some records may remain exempt from public access for periods greater than 30 years if they contain sensitive information.

You can obtain more information about the record series listed above (and the items within the series) from RecordSearch, the Archives database. Follow the links in the series lists to go directly to information on that series. You can also use RecordSearch to find out about the agencies that created the records and to locate more records on your subject. You might also explore PhotoSearch to find out if there are photos pertaining to your subject.

RecordSearch and PhotoSearch are available online or in all Archives reading rooms. Reference staff are available in the reading rooms to help you, or email ref@naa.gov.au.

Comments or other feedback can be sent to archives@naa.gov.au

updated December 2006