AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2144, 4 February 1880, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

(By Telegbaph.) [Per Eingarooma at the Bluff. 1 The Ringarooma, which arrived at the Bluff yesterday, brings the following Items in addition to those published last evening : VICTORIA. The Land Act Amendment Bill passed through its principal stages in the Assembly, giving rather more favorable terms to selectors. Nearly 200,000 electors are on the new rolls. It is expected the elections will all be completed on Feb. 9. The Government new railway scheme includes 410 miles of line. The estimated cost of the construction is £2,394,528, which includes rails. A man named William Grant was committed for trial for bigamy. He asserted his first wife died in . the Oamaru Hospital, but the woman turned up in Melbourne. The Minister of Railways is building two railway carriages for the use of the Prince of Wales. The metropolitan brewers employed four analytical chemists to advise as to the best means of cleansing bottles containing poison. The colonial beer scare is subsiding. NEW SOUTH WALES. Slackness of trade in the coal-mining districts of the Hunter River is producing much distress amongst the miners and their families, and unless a revival takes place an appeal for assistance will have to be made to the public, as many families are already absolutely in want. Carlotta Patti opens at the Theatre Royal, Sydney, on Feb. 23. Five persons were drowned in the Richmond River by the upsetting of a dredger. It is suggested that the Exhibition buildings should be converted into a huge wool store. The Roman Catholic priesthood have formed a political association called “ The Catholic Education Union,” to work the elections. A domestic servant named Williams, a handsome girl of eighteen, poisoned herself through disappointed love. QUEENSLAND. Mrs Dickson, wife of the late Colonial

Treasurer, died of tetanus, caused by accidentally shooting herself through the hand with a revolver. Two apprentices escaped from the ship, in Broderick Bay. One, who gas arrested* stated that in escaping om the ship the raft they had made capsized-^ 1 arid his companion was drowned.- He was picked up by a sailingboah