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Yes births within the past 100 years are not accessible on-line. They are open to the public but with a couple of exceptions, you can't search them on-line. The exceptions are if you go to either GRONI or PRONI in Belfast in person. If that's not practical, then you can ring GRONI and pay them to search for you. There's a search fee for every 5 years, plus the cost of the certificate if one is found. You pay over the phone, by credit card. Can't be done by post or e-mail as you need to be on the phone to type in your credit card number.

Don’t assume that the word deed only means title to property. It has a much wider meaning. The Registry of Deeds contains a variety of types of documents. All generically referred to as deeds. There are sales, assignments, mortgages, marriage settlements, wills, bills of discovery but the most common are leases. There are hundreds of thousands of leases, often for tenant farmers. It may be that the McCollum estate has no records but if any of their deeds were registered (it wasn’t compulsory and there was a fee) then a copy could still exist. Strictly speaking they are called memorials and are transcripts of the original documents, occasionally abbreviated here and there.

In the early years the main leases tend to be for major transactions but as the years go by you see smaller parcels of land recorded.

Ian Montgomery (a member of PRONI’s staff) has also compiled a list of 17th century leases for the Antrim Estate (D2977 collection). So that pre-dates the Registry of Deeds. There’s 3 references to John McCollum of Cloghcorr in 1678 and in 1681. No Taylors, so they would be sub-tenants as you say.

The Registry of Deeds can be searched by either surname or townland.  With a common surname like Taylor the surname index is a bit of a struggle and my advice is to focus on townland

https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/185720?availability=Family%20History%20Library

The way the records are held takes a little getting used to. But basically you need to search in Antrim, in Lower Glenarm Barony, Tickmacrevan parish and townland. That’s the way the records were kept. (Early records didn’t bother with the barony)

I’d search in the townland index for any Taylors in Ballyvaddy.  The indexes are in batches of years, so quite a few searches depending in how many years you want to search. If you find a Taylor In Ballyvaddy you then need to note the deed number and then look the actual deed up in the main records.  If you get the hang of it first time round you will win a prize (in my opinion). If you do find a Taylor in Ballyvaddy, give me the details and I’ll try and find the actual deed for you.

I think you live in Oz. Think about all this in terms of Oz records (about which I actually know nothing). If your ancestors owned a station for many years there would probably be some paper records. But if your ancestors were farmhands who worked here and there for a year or so before moving on, there probably wouldn’t be any records now for their stay on those stations. Would that be broadly right? Well it’d be the same in Ireland. Labourers would be on “at will” leases where either side could give notice at any time (and where there was rarely a written contract). Though it carried the risk of eviction without notice, it generally suited labourers as they could move to another townland to take advantage of unexpected work opportunities there. No notice was required. Paper records rarely existed for labourers/weavers in Ireland in the 1700s or early 1800s.

When your ancestors arrived in Oz what were they then? If they were farmers/station owners then they might have been that in Ireland (if they had the capital to get a station in Oz). But if they were labourers or farm workers then they were probably that in Ireland too.  Does that help?

MacLysaght says of Taylor (Táilliúir): “This English occupational name (which is not used as a synonym of any Gaelic-Irish name) is well known in Ireland since the fourteenth century, and is now very numerous both in Ulster and in Dublin).

Brian S Turner’s book: “Family names in the Glens of Antrim” lists the name several times, from the Hearth money rolls (1669) there’s a James McTaylor in Drumkitt; In Tickmacrevan Pat Taylor in Glenarm Town (3 hearths) and William & George Taller (Taylor) in Mogley which he thinks may be Bay townland.  You perhaps have a source indicating it’s Ballyvaddy?

This parish was originally all Antrim estate land. You could search the Antrim Estates records in PRONI (D2977 collection) to see if any Taylors are listed as tenants in the late 1600s through to the 1800s. (Records will be in paper format, so personal visit is required). No Taylors in Ballyvaddy in the PRONI e-catalogue. If your family held land, you could try the Registry of Deeds which go back to about 1709. They are on-line on Familysearch.