Australian News.

Hastings Standard, Issue 387, 31 July 1897, Page 2

Australian News.

A Kanaka has hanged himself in Stewart Creek gaol, near Townsville. The South Australian Treasurer declines to urge the retirement of civil servants at GO. A miner named Daniel Meathers was fatally injured at Shierlaw's Perseverance mine, Coolgardie. Two men had a narrow escape from suffocation by foul air in a sewer at Richmond, Victoria, the other day. The Victorian Government see its way to spend several pounds for filters for the State schoosl. Blue-jackets got ashore from H.M.S. Rapid at Cairns, Queensland, and created a disgraceful row in the Chinese quarters. The South Australian Central Board of Health has refused to give permission for the erection of a crematorium at Rosebery. The South Australian Pharmacy Act of 1861 is held by Mr Justice Bundley to be so loosely framed and defective that a new Act is necessary. A sailor named John Mahoney was fatally shot in a disturbance at the Telegraph Hotel, Hobart. Denis Cave, a seaman, has been arrested. A fisherman, who had fallen out of his boat while asleep, was rescued from drowning by the Steamer Ashley on her last trip from Melbourne to Newcastle. The Headington Hill Station, purchased by the Queensland Government, and which has an area of 36,702 acres, is to be surveyed into agricultural holdings.

A scheme for water conversation at Kiandra, New South Wales, recommended by Colonel Home, the irrigation expert, provides for the building of a wall 150 ft. high in places, which will impound the largest sheet of arti-ficially-stored water in the colonies. - Further particular regarding the attempted suicide of Fred Waugh, a, well-known football player in the ranks of the South Melbourne Club, show that he had been keeping company with a young woman for some time, but during the past week or so she had shown a disposition to dissever the intimacy, 3nd quite recently she told him that " she could not marry a man who was only getting a salary of £2 per week." This seemed to prey 011 his mind, and, fearing the consequences, his parents had been keeping watch over him. About seven a.m. on the morning of the occurrence Waugh's mother heard groans in his bedroom, and on going into the room fouud him lying on the bed, with a large jagged wound on the right side of his throat, which had evidently been inflicted with a table knife found in the room. Dr Ford, who was sent for, stitched up the wound, and Waugh, who was in a very weak state from loss of blood, was removed to the Alfred Hospital. A note in the young man's handwriting was found in the room. It was marked a quarter to two a.m., and in it Waugh said he was mad, and asked his parents' forgiveness. At latest accounts the patient was progressing favorably. Another young man, Hugh Marchant, formerly of Adelaide, committed suicide at Albany by taking strychnine. An inquest was held, and a verdict of suicide while temporarily insane was returned. The evidence showed that the deceased had an engagement with a young woman in South Australia, which was broken off by her a couple of months ago. This appears to have preyed on his mind, although he never gave any indication of an intention to do away with himself.