LATER FROM MELBOURNE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 4, 19 November 1861, Page 2

LATER FROM MELBOURNE.

DESTRUCTION OF BOURKB AND THE EXPLORATION EXPEDITION—ONE SURVIVOR RESCUED. The "Versailles" has, arrived, with dales up to the 9th November. We have obtained several papers, from which-we gather the following intelligence : — An amendment on the Budget had been moved, and the debate was adjourned. The result to Ministers is quite doubtful. The " Aldinga" was still on the slip, "but advertised to leave for Otago on Tuesday last. Her arrival may be hourly looked for. : Continued in Supplement.

Pleura-pneumonia was raging to an immense extent at Sydney. Tenders were called for the destruction of 3000 beasts.

A shocking murder had occurred at Inglewbod. Vincenso Perini was stabbed by his brother Giacomo, and died from the effects. The Melbourne Cup was won by the Sydney horse Archer. A terrible accident occurred, through Twilight, Medora, and Dispatch falling over one another, with fatal effects to the two last-mentioned horses and serious injuries .' to the riders.

The fate of the exploring expedition^ has at •jiaet been ascertained, and exceeds in its deplorable results anything that had been surmised. Bourke, Wills, and Gray, perished through hunger and exhaustion. King alone survived. Bourke and Wills succeeded in making the sea shore on an inlet in the gulf of Carpentaria, though from the nature of the level plain the sea could not be clearly distinguished. Returning to the depot at Cooper's Creek, on the journey to which, Cray died, they found to their horror that Brahe and his party, whom they expected to meet there, had left it only that very morning, In the condition they were in, it was hopeless to try and overtake Brake ; and Bourke and his party turned their course to Adelaide. They arrived at Cooper's Creek a few hours too late, and left a few hours too early, for Brahe returned to the depot after Bourke left, and unfortunately found no trace of his having visited the spot in his absence. The narrative that follows, obtained from a diary kept by Wills, is horrible in the extreme. Slowly they moved on, almost naked, and with no means of subsistence, living on the Nardoo seed. At last, weak and exhausted, they could get no further. Wills and Bourke perished, and King was rescued at the last gasp by the searching party sent out under Mr. Howitt. The remains of these martyrs to science are to be removed to Melbourne, and monuments erected to their memory,, Wills says in his notes, ** We have done all we could, our deaths will be the result of the mismanagement of others,"