Hi! The place to start is by chatting to family, the older the better, and trying to work out grandparents, great grandparents, when they married, where they were born, when they died, what jobs they did, where they lived, etc. It depends which country you're in, but in the UK, the 1901 Census has been released, so ideally you want to be able to know which relations were alive and roughly where they were in 1901. In the UK, Genes Reunited (an offshoot of Friends Reunited) is a handy site - plenty of Aussies there too with their UK roots. I joined up to a pay site Ancestry for a while and then went all out for a few free weeks before I got to the stage of needing to pay. There are plenty of other people happy to take money off you for a look at Census returns (taken 10 yearly in the UK and released after a century) and at Births/Deaths/Marriage certificates. I also like FreeBMD and the mormons site (good for finding out info if you know who was alive around 1881). The BBC also has a good site on how to get started and where to look for UK ancestors.

You can find all sorts out, eg. my husband has lots of carpenters in his ancestors (no surprise he's good at it then!) and he & I are 5th cousins through his mum & my dad!

Good luck and happy hunting - just one warning, its as addictive as Minti!