AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume I, Issue 91, 26 February 1881, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

[Reuter's Special to Star.]

Melbourne, Yesterday. The tender of Mr. Ames has been accepted for the west front and dome of Parliament Houses, at £180,023.

The claims of the sufferers by the late Beaufort railway accident have been adjusted. It is said Mrs. Spencer's compensation amounts to £976, besides £30 to each of her daughters.

Sydney, Yesterday. Fifty ounces of gold from two buckets of quartz have been obtained from the Garibaldi Claim, Solferino Beef, Grafton, and eighty ounces from two more buckets.

Excitement consequent on the discovery of gold at Mount Poole, near the Grey Ranges, continues. Parties have been organised, and have started from Wilcannia to the scene of the discovery. Teams have also started with rations.

Excavations made have exposed the foundations of the great hall of the Town Hall buildings as being of a disgraceful character. In places the stones look as if merely thrown into trenches ; there are open joints in the masonry, and the base is not down to the rock in some places. •

A miner,- named James Evans, brought into Wilcannia, on the 7th, 24ozs. of gold, consisting of a nugget weighing lOozs, a

second weighing two ozs, and the remainder coarse nuggety gold. He states that Jiimself and party ob.tained if ia three days from two to six feet from th« surface with dishes. The diggings are about 200 miles from Wilcannia. Twentyfive miner's rights were issued. At Teiuora, Head and Aldridge's olaim is still yielding splendid stone, specimens being banked for safety as fast as they are raised. Great excitement prevails, and ground in the vicinity is being pegged out in eveiy direction. Mr. John Young received 418750 commission for superintending the erection of the Garden Palace. The Miners' Lodges having held a secret conference, now promise to alter the present state of affairs in the district, and will demand higher hewing rateß. • The reports brought by the s.s. Gonga of the fearful hurricane at Levuka are lacking in details, as those aboard were unable to communicate with the shore, and the vessel slipped cable and sailed for Sydney. The house of the Chief Justice and also the public school were seen to-be levelled, and many others unroofed. The steamers Bewa and Goahead sank in the harbor at their moorings. The Ocean Queen dragged her anchor and came into collision with the steamer Surprise, damaging the latter, and numerous boats floated past the Gungo bottom up. It is feared that the loss of life was considerable. Brisbane, Yesterday. Skuthorpe, up to the present, has. not permitted a single person to see the record, or any of the articles, which he alleges he has of Leichardt. Skuthorpe left the town of Blackall on the 24th January, and nobody seems to know anything of his whereabouts.

Mr. Laurie, of Sandringham Station. Mulligan River, Qveensland, who arrived at Adelaide on Thursday, throws discredit on Skuthorpe's story of the Leichardt relics. Sandringham is near the country in which the relics are said to have been discovered.

A residence at Tarampa, near Ipswich has been stuck np by two armed men, who knocked down a female and robbed her.

A boat, unknown, with two men aboard, capsized- off Thursday Island on the 9th instant,, and no traces have sinoe beta found of the occupants.