Certified Copies

Filling out the application for my de facto partner visa is not a completely straightforward task. There are a lot of ambiguities and questions, and for each of these, there are five different answers to be found online. For example, today I am wondering if photocopies of cards, letters, bank statements, etc need to be certified by someone to say they are copies of originals (i.e. you take the original document and the photocopy to someone like a pharmacist and they certify that they are copies of the same document).

The answers found online are:

No, you only need to certify identification documents (passport, birth certificate)
Yes, you need to certify everything
Yes and no, certify bank statements but not cards and letters

So I called Immigration. Actually, that's a bit misleading. I called Immigration, then searched the web in the 15 minutes of hold time before an operator was able to answer my call.

She said to certify anything that has been photocopied. So there you have it, from the horse's mouth, in 2013, get everything certified. This is my stack of photocopied letters from family members. This doesn't include any of the bills or bank statements or life insurance policies, etc, that I'll need to include. In other words, this is just a fraction of the paperwork that will need to be signed (and yes, they have to stamp and sign every page). My local pharmacist is going to HATE me!