AUSTRALIA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 55, 10 February 1872, Page 15

AUSTRALIA.

The Melbourne cabinet makers are still on strike for nine shillings a day. Diptheria is committing terrible ravages at Ballarat and Creswick. Thousands of sheep in the Lachlan district have died for want of water. A rich deposit of chrome ore has been discovered near Ipswich, Queensland. The yield of gold in Victoria in 1871 was twenty-one thousand ounces in excess of that in 1870. 5s to Gs a day and board are the wages paid this season to harvest men in Victoria. An unusual number of crimes committed for sheer malice are reported from Victoria. A piece of solid rock has been found embedded in the heart of a tree on Mount Macedon. A Victorian constable lately rode 150 miles in twenty-four hours in pursuit of a thief, whom he caught. A resident at Meredith, Victoria, has been fined nine times foi refusing to have his child vaccinated. An immense grass fire on the Upper Darling was extinguished in five minutes by a thunder shower. The Victorian Racing Club are going to erect a grand stand to hold five thousand persons, and to cost six thousand pounds. The heat at Geelong has been so great that some of the fruit in the gardens has been literally roasted on the trees. The Melbourne City Council propose to borrow £150,000 for extending the market accommodation of the city. Five thousand sheep were burned to death by a fire on a station in Riverina. The manager went out of his mind in consequence. A juror summoned to attend an inquest at the Yarra Bend Asylum, cut his throat, and became the subject of an inquest himself. Water is so scare at Ballarat that notice has been given that the supply will be cut from persons watering the streets, gardens, or yards. A 59 ounee nugget has been found at Stockyard Creek, Gipp's Land. The total yield that day of the claim in which i't was found was 90 ounces. Some of the Kyneton farmers have manifested a preference for Chinese labor, on account of the neat and sub stantial character of the work. An enthusiastic writer to the " Sydney Morning Herald" suggests that there should be a general holiday and clay of rejoicing throughout the Australian colonies on the completion of the Anglo-Australian telegraph. In a despatch on the Fiji question submitted to Lord Bel more for transmission to the Imperial Government, Sir James Martin says :—" The whole European population amounts to about 1500. How many of the Europeans are Americans it is impossible to say." The " Bendigo Independent" states on excellent authority that the dividends from various claims in the Sandhurst district paid to one gentleman alone amounted last year to the sum of £50,000, and had one been paid just inside instead of outside'of the old year his income from this source alone would have averaged £JOOO per week. The goldfields at Tambaroora, NSW, continue to furnish an almost daily excitement, and new companies are constantly coming out. It is the old

claims, however, that yield the returns, all the speculative companies that have taken up new adjacent ground being still in the stage of calls and expen diture. The dividend looms in the haze. A girl named Elizabeth Ramsay was burned to death the other day at Deniliquin, in consequence of following the foolish practice of pouring kerosene on to the wood in the fire-place to make it ignite. The kerosene exploded in the can, and the girl was burned to such a degree that she died in two or three hours. The practice is a very common one, and has been the occasion of several shocking deaths of late.