AUSTRALIA'S first Sheila may be older than you think.

Family history website Ancestry.com.au on Thursday published the entire collection of Australian births, marriages and deaths indexes, from 1788 to 1985, featuring the records of more than 15 million Australians.

Famous names found in the records include Australia's first prime minister Edmund Barton, legendary cricketer

Sir Donald Bradman and aviation pioneer Charles Kingsford-Smith.

It is the first time such records have been combined on a fully searchable online database.

Website spokesman Brad Argent believes the publication of the records will motivate a lot of Australians to search their history.

"It makes the whole process of starting a family tree so much easier, because you can zero-in on someone's history just by typing in a single name,'' Mr Argent said.

He said the need for prior knowledge of dates or locations to begin a search will no longer stand in the way of budding historians.

"One of the benefits (of the site) is that you start to get quantitative information on history, allowing you to do really good research,'' Mr Argent said.

Information was sourced from a collection of microfilm archives and online records from state record offices and took four years to complete.

"We certainly want to add to this database over time as we get access to more material,'' Mr Argent said.

"There's a never-ending quest for more data by historians ... they want more and more and more.''

The records also revealed that John was the most popular male name in Australia, and Mary the most popular female name during the data record period.

Originally published as A bunch of old Sheilas