AUSTRALIAN ITEMS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 343, 20 November 1868, Page 3

AUSTRALIAN ITEMS.

A new goldfield has been found near Steiglifz, Victoria, which promises to turn out very well. Hops are about to be largely cultivated near Warmambool. £300,000 is paid away annually by the Australian Colonies for imported hops. An extraordinary pedestrian fete has been accomplished by a miner named Strange. He walked from the Oympie Creek diggings to Ballarat, a distance of about 1,700 miles. The farmers on the Murrumbidgee complain of mice. Nearly two-thousand of these animals were killed in one day on a single farm during the gathering of corn. The noise made by them at night is compared to a flock of sheep when travelling. Their devastation is extraordinary. A large number of splendid nuggets have been discovered at the Berlin Diggings, near Inglewood, Victoria. The crops in Victoria are said to bo in a very unpromising condition. Owing to the want if rain, the grass is brown an 1 stunted, and the hay crops bid fair to prove a complete failure, while the root crops are also very poor. To add to the blackness of the prospect, moreover, not only has the dreaded take-all made its appearance, but great havoc has also been occasioned by the grub. The take-all is thus described by the Melbourne “Leader” as follows;—“ It appears to commence on the hills first, the crop changes from a rich green .to a patchy ye low color, and the yellow spots spread until the whole field is left nearly bare of vegetation, and the land on which it exists will grow neither grass nor anything else for years to come. \Vc have soon spots in paddocks where the hike-all appeared when they were last in crop which was five years ago, and the spots remain without vegetation to this clay. Manure will not destroy the take-all; in fact it appears to assist it, so that it does not proceed from the land being poor; and the farmers have each a different opinion, whether it is produced by aj fly or a fungus.” Some interesting and very satisfactory experiments have been tried at the Catherine Reef Company’s mine, Sandhurst, with the new blasting material, gun-cotton. Further trials arc to be made with a view of thoroughly testing its c ffieienoy. It is assorted that the gun-cotton effects a saving of labor in boring; secures more effective blasting; saves the time of the workmen who can return to work as soon as the blast has taken place; and lessens the danger of an accidental explosion. The “ Mining Journal ” supplies the following account of the new Berlin goldfield near Inglewood:—“The rush still goes on. In Cellaud’s Gully, where the hundred and fifty pound weight nugget was found, from •forty to fifty claims are on gold, and from this place alone one gold buyer purchased twenty-eight pounds of gold in a week, represented by thirty beautiful nuggets. A sixty ounce nugget has also been found, and numbers of smaller ones—in fact the ground is rich with them. The mining surveyor at Inglewood reports that he has seen nuggets from one-hundred and eighty ounces to ten pennyweights, taken from here; that the ground is dry cemented gravel and sand, very hard from two to five feet deep, resting on sandstone bottom; that no quartz roofs have been found as yet; and that adjacent country presents all tho indication of a rich goldfield. ” The remit of’thc assay in Melbourne of a parcel of gold found on the Barossa, South Australia, has been received, and shows that tho gold is very pure, giving a return of twenty-threa carrats fine.