AUSTRALIAN NOTES

Evening Star, Issue 14225, 26 November 1909, Page 8

AUSTRALIAN NOTES

The wirehss telegraphy enterprises in which the Commonwealth Government are interested are not to be limited to the two stations at Sydney and Fremantle, the equipment of which is now thrown open to public tender, or to the offer of the Pacific Radio-Telegraph Company, which is to be discussed shortly by a special conference of representatives of Governments whose shores are washed by the Pacific Ocean. At the conclusion of a recent meeting of the Federal Cabinet the Prime Minister said : " The construction of the wireless telegraph stations already decided upon offers an opportunity for considering other developments in this direction in connection, possibly, with New Zealand and Papua. Further inquiry into the best moans of undertaking the Australian part of the work is about to be initiated.” T lie prospects of the Victorian export trade in perishable products for the current season are exceptionally bright. In a report to the Secretary for Agriculture, the Superintendent of Exports says that during October the exports of dairy produce amounted to 4,605,4271b, as compared with 2,410,0501b for October of last vear. It is anticipated that the increase will be fully maintained, and that the quantity of butter exported this season will bo double that of last season. During last month 3,000 head of poultry were exported, as compared with 195 head during the previous October. The mutton and lamb shipments for last month totalled 75,891 carcasses, as compared with 12.822 carcasses for the previous October—near I v a sixfold increase. A lew days ago Miss Bridle, who resides near Morwell (Vic.), noticed a largo snake in the drawing room. She called to her brother, who was working in the paddock, but when he arrived, armed with a pitchfork, the reptile had glided out of sight. 1 here was an organ in the room, and on the bellows being pressed with the fork a sound came from the instrument as though someone were practising the scales. J his, il was afterwards ascertained, was caused by the .snake lying along the keys, fur when the lid of the organ was raised the reptile poked out its head, and when Mr Bridle hurriedly closed the lid the snake’s head was jammed fast, and it was killed. Miss Bridle was in the habit of playing the organ every clay, and it is supposed that the reptile, charmed by the music, had made its home in the instrument for some time past. Commissioner Bussell gave judgment in Ihe case of Robert Johnston, trading as J. and R. Johnston, importers, of Adelaide. Johnston's liabilities to fifty-two creditors amounted to £10,500; bis realisable assets were £2,756. There wore tweidy-lwo credits for moneys borrowed, and thirteen were personal loans unsecured. -Mr Commissioner Russell said the insolvent obtained credit for goods, and borrowed money alike from money-lenders and triends, pledged other people’s goods, and incurred large debts by means of gross fraud and lying. He misappropriated moneys wihch came to him as trustee of his father's estate, and obtained forbearance from trustful business creditors by systematic and shameful false representations. His Honor awarded the insolvent a second class certificate, and ordered him to be imprisoned for eighteen months, with hard labor. 1 ictoria has followed the example of New Zealand in acquiring a .State training ship. The Premier lias agreed to purchase the ship Loch Ryan for £5,000 as a training ship for boys. The Loch Ryan is a fulb rigged ship of 1,250 tons, and will accommodate from 150t0200 boys. It is proposed to work her on the same system as the iSohraon, in Sydney. Built on the Clyde, of iron, in 1877. by Messrs J. and G. Thomson, her measurements are; Length, 228 ft Sin; beam, 55ft Sin; and depth, 21ft oin. A squad of Fremantle (Western Australia) .School Cadets wove engaged in rifle piactice at the Karrakatta ranges,, when a cartridge caught in the breech of a rifle belonging to Frank Perara. Finding it impossible to rectify the trouble while in a recumbent position, he handed the rifle to a cadet named Gibbons. While the latter was fumbling with the ejector the cartridge exploded, and the bullet entered Perara's head below the left oar, and protruded on the other side. Perara was operated on in the Perth Hospital, but afterwards sank rapidly, and died in the afternoon. Mr Hebert 1). Watt, who has boon selected professor of agriculture at the University of .Sydney, is a native of Ayrshire, Scotland, and been associated with agriculture since boyhood. He is comparatively a young man, graduating at the University of Glasgow in 1991. Mr Watt took the M.A. and B.Se. degrees in 1905, and two years later won the Carnegie Research Scholarship, He also graduated at the Wes! of Scotland Agricultural College and the West of Scotland Dairy Institute. Ho is the holder of the national diploma of agriculture and the national diploma of dairying. For the past two years he has been chief chemist to the Transvaal Agricultural Department. In a. robbery cafe heard at Bendigo a stalwart youth named Stanley Dale gave evidence on behalf of the police. He described himself as a laborer, and admitted having had sixteen drinks with the man alleged to have been robbed, but had not ‘’shouted” himself. “You did very well,” remarked the sergeant. As witness was stepping out of the box at the conclusion of his evidence, Mr Moore, P.M., asked him how old he was, and Dale replied “ Eighteen years.” The Police Magistrate: It is lucky for you you are not seventeen years. If you were 1 would send you to the reformatory. Where do you work? Witness : Pm not working at present. I’m going to work to-morrow. Tiie Police -Magistrate; You are the worst character of a boy I have ever met to come here and admit that you, a mere lad, had sixteen drinks in one afternoon at someone else’e expense—and then to call yourself a laborer. A laborer! It is not fair to an honest working man to call yourself so. The way you are going on the only laboring work you’ll ever do will be in His* Majesty’s gaol. If you don’t go to work I hope the police will have you up as an idle and disorderly person. There died at the Ballarat Benevolent Asylum on the 9th inst. a man named John Birch. He was sixty-nine years of age, and had been an inmate of the institution fer thirty-three yeais. He passed the last sixteen years of his life in bed, and his “ next-door neighbor,” as he described the patient, in the adjacent bed, was an old warrior, who claims to have been born in 1805, tgi years prior to the battle of Waterloo. Birch, who suffered from chronic rheumatism, arrived in Ballarat with his parents when he was eleven years of age. He stated that his rheumatism was caused by working in wet ground in the early digging days. Prior to his death he said ht was tired of the world and weary of bed. A young fellow named Cartledge, twentyone years of age, living at Hobart, went out shooting rabbits, and rested his gun on a stone while he put his hand in his pocket for some cigarette tobacco. The weapon slipped off the stone, and in falling the trigger got jarred, exploding the charge, which went into his abdomen, practically shattering it. Two companions picked him up to carry him to where a doctor could be sent for, and when they laid him down for a spell he begged them to give him his gin: so that he could blow his brains out, as he was suffering such awful agony. They did not cany him much further before he ex pired, bis last words being “AVhat will my poor mother do without me?” His mothei was a widow.