Late Australian Items.

Hastings Standard, Issue 350, 17 June 1897, Page 4

Late Australian Items.

Minnie Decker, aged ten, was playing with some boys in a paddock at Sydney, when her dr.;>ss caught firs from a spark from a cracker. She was so severely burned that she died in two hours.

A man named Kospbolka met with a severe burning accident at the Block 14 Smelting Works at Port Adelaide. He was endeavoring to place in position a pot to relieve a charge from the furnace, when the receptacle made an unexpected movement, with the result that he was thrown backwards into the slag-pot of molten material. A Chinese device to evade Customs duty was recently discovered by the Customs authorities in Melbourne. Several packages of " drugs," which arri\-ed by the steamer Australian, consigned to Hing Kee, a Chinese importee, excited the curiosity of a landing waiter, and on being examined three of them were found to contain parcels of tobacco, tea, and silk, carefully wrapped up like drugs, in the centre of the cases, and surrounded by preserved plums. Drugs, the Argus explains, come within the free list, while the concealed articles are subject to duty. The matter was dealt with by the Commissioner of Customs, who found that there was a clear intention to deceive, and, under Section 96 of the Customs Act, inflicted a penalty of three times the amount of the duty sought to be evaded, The total sum Hing Kee was called upon to pay was £l6 6s. The death occurred at Melbourne on June 4, of Mr Peter Burke, who saw active service in the New Zealand war of 1860, and could many interesting incidents of the Waikato campaign. On one occasiou, he used to say, he was ordered to accompany a detachment of soldiers numbering about twenty, to convey commissariat stores to the front. While threading their way through a deep gorge in one of the mountains the party was attacked and surrounded by a large force of Maoris. Every man forming the escort was massacred with the exception of Burke. "Whilst he was fighting against overpowering odds, and expecting every minute to be cut down, an alarm was raised that the main body of the British army was advancing. This caused the Maoris to consult their own safety, which- they did by taking immediate flight, leaving only Burke alive of the party. After the war, for which he received a medal, he went to Victoria and was admitted to the Permanent Artillery, and from there was appointed to Pentridge as a warder, which position he held until a short time previous to his death.