New Zealand BDMs

You can search for birth, death and marriage historical records here for that family cousin whose ship out of Britain headed south to New Zealand. The site has a search facility for NZ:

• Births that occurred at least 100 years ago
• Stillbirths that occurred at least 50 years ago
• Marriages and eventually Civil Unions that occurred 80 years ago
• Deaths that occurred at least 50 years ago or the deceased's date of birth was at least 80 years ago.

In New Zealand registration of births and deaths was introduced in 1848, and in 1854 for marriages.

The free searches return index entries with names, year, and date of birth for deaths, but no location information.

You can order and pay online to have a research hardcopy mailed at about the cost of a UK certificate. Other formats are also available.

The site seemed to work pretty well, as long as you type in dates in the right format.