AUSTRALIAN.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 165, 14 August 1886, Page 3

AUSTRALIAN.

Sydney, August 5. —The Seamen's Union are opposing the demands of the shipowners for reduction of wages. The German warship Albastross, which has just returned from a cruise in the Pacific eeas, repoits that she shelled villages at several islands where Germans had been' murdered, and killed and wounded forty natives. The contract between the Governments of New South Wales, New Zealand, and the Union Company for the conveyance of the San Francisco mails has been ratified by the Legislative Assembly. Mr John Waddington's syndicate, which has undertaken the construction of a railway from Guildford to Geraldton, Western Australia, propose to transfer the conceseion received by them for its construction to a company with a capital of half a million, with the same directors as at present. It is probable that Mr Keane, of Perth, will receive the contract for the rrilway ; his price doea not exceed £3,500 par mile.

Melbourne, August 10 The "'Age" to-day publishes a telegram from Darwin, stating that a schooner which has arrived reported that some who had started for Kimberley had returnad learning that the field waa unpayable. Three hundred men were working, but it ia doubtful whether they were making wages.