At last we have some free on line BMD's. Here is the site

http://bdmhistoricalrecords.identityservices.govt.nz

Now if only it would load up!

Good luck everyone.

Hi Dianeh,

There were quite a few complaints on a number of Australian lists about this problem. I've just done a 'test run' and it came up straight away and even a test for a "William Smith" only took about a minute.
Perhaps is was being overloaded due to it's popularity.

Regards,
Graeme

It's brilliant! What was taking months (by virtue of snailmail - not to mention filling out endless forms) is now taking minutes.

Hi if anyone is interested in doing a swop. I live in the South Island of New Zealand and would be willing to do some research in Dunedin to Christchurch area for the return done for me in forest of Dean. I have beed to the FOD in 2006 and hope to return later this year.

I discovered this search engine last week and I must admit I am rather disappointed as it doesn't seem to want to search marriages without inserting a date and month as well as a year. Not very good if it's the date, month and year one's looking for!!!!

I've managed to find a close relative on this new database, simply because it was a very unusual surname. Otherwise it's a very poor system the Kiwi's have set up. I went looking for the death of a Thomas Young, and unless you know when a person died, I'd have to buy about half a dozen certificates, and then I'd still not be sure I had the right one. Unlike the New South Wales Historical BMD Indexes which gives the names of parents (in most cases), the NZ BMD Index doesn't even give you the town or place. Pretty hopeless really, and very disappointing.

--
Don Cameron