AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 62, 20 February 1877, Page 3

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

The Tasmanian Parliament has been prorogued until 9th February. Levey, the comet player, is to appear shortly in Melbourne. Two thousand sheep were sold in the Adelaide market at Is per head. The Compulsory Vaccination Act is to be enforced in Tasmania. Herbert Roberts, the champion handstroke billiard player, is in Victoria. There are heavy floods at Surat and Charleville, Queensland. Both towns are submerged. A Royal Commission has been appointed to inquire into the condition of the aborigines of Victoria. Owing to the increase of the value of wheat in Melbourne, bread has been raised in price. A portion of the General Hospital, Launceston, has been destroyed by fire, and the remainder narrowly escaped destruction. At Queensland, the Leonora steamer ran into the brig A. F. Levy in Formosa Channel. The latterinstanily sank, and all lives were lost. The remaining child of the Holden family, at Sydney, died of small-pox on January 27. The father and other patients were then doing well. The Chamber of Commerce of land hold a meeting shortly with reference to the possible termination of the Torres Straits mail contract. Aman who bathed ontside the Melbourne swimming baths in order to save the fee, was pulled under by a shark and lost his life. A ledgerkeeper and an accountant at the Australian Joint-Stock Bank, Rockhampton, have been arrested on a charge of embezzlement. They had been cleverly manipulating the books for years past. The cable messages from London have lately been transmitted with more than usual celerity. The average time of the messages received by the Argus is about ten hours; taking into consideration the difference of time between the two countries. A gentleman named R. Campbell, from the neighborhood of Geelong, who, while suffering from sunstroke, took passage from Melbourne to Sydney in the Macedon on the Btlrinst., mysteriously disappeared, leaving a valise and other articles behind in his berth. At a meeting of publicans at Sandridge —after a long discussion, it was resolved " that the trade should continue to keep strictly closed on Sundays." It was agreed " that a committee of three should be chosen privately from the presentvigilance committee by the members thereof, for the purpose of procuring men, strangers to the district, to act as informers, and that such informers on a conviction being obtained by them should be paid a sum of money, to be fixed on by the committee.',