This paper is essentially a reference manual to assist users of the first wave of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. It has three main purposes. First it describes briefly the structure of the survey instruments. Second, and most importantly, it provides a listing of all the data items together with the response categories used in the coding and the relevant population covered by the data item. Third, it describes, again briefly, the origin and source of each question.