MELBOURNE;

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 271, 10 April 1873, Page 6

MELBOURNE;

(Fromou/rovm Correspondent.) March 28th. The past summer has been unusually wet and cool, and highly favorable for both squatters and farmers. The crops have been exceptionally good, aud feed for live stock moat plentiful. The favorable season has been a godsend to many of the struggling free selectors, who now find themselves with cash in hand, and in possession of holdings of considerable value. The price of live stock has ruled very high for a long time, and has ser iously crippled the meat preserving interest. Increased attention is now being directed to the coal question, on account of the inconvenience and loss caused by the repeated strikes of the Newcastle colliers. Thin seams of good coal have been found in various parts of Victoria, but hitherto no seams of sufficient thickness have been yet opened to justify |a belief that the colony will be able to produce a sufficient quantity to supply the requirements of trade. Within the last six months three alluvial goldtields have been discovered. The first in importance is situated on Burkes Flat in the Ayoca Forest, here the gold in small quantities is distributed over a large extent of ground, and the field is emphatically a poor man's diggings. The second field is on the Kardinia Creek, near Berwick, thirty miles from Melbourne. The prospectors have obtained a lease of 10 acres of alluvial ground, and the washdirt on the lead is said to be three feet thick, and the lead 12 feet wide, and trial prospects give a yield of half an ounce per load. The third and by far the richest field, is on Turton's Creek, about 20 miles from Carner Inlet in Gipps Land. The claims j here are of very large extent, and nearly all the rich ground is held by the prospectors and their friends, whom they "" laid on " before the discovery was made generally known. The grouud is shallow and easily worked, and small parties of four or six men obtain sometimes for a week's work, from four to eight hundred ounces of gold. I never heard of asimilat mining case as the Blue Spur one just heard at the Supreme Court, Lawrence. The great Moouta case, involving the title to the Moouta copper mines in South Australia, was a most protracted and expensive lawsuit, and, after going through the law courts of the colony, was taken before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and at last settled by a compromise — the shares being apportioned among the litigants, so that neither side secured a victory.