AUSTRALIAN SUMMARY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IX, Issue 148, 28 May 1885, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN SUMMARY.

(Per City ot Sydney at Auckland.)

(per united press association. Sydney, May 21. The Contingent is expected to return about the 12th June, when a grand parade of all the forces will be held. The strength of the permanent force now amounts to a little over 450 men, and the total defence force, including the reserves and all branches of the service, to something like 10,000 men. The water supply question still absorbs much attention. The weather continues fine and dry, and the supply m the dams is fast decreasing. Already both cjty and suburbs have been placed under a strictly intermittent system, and means are devised to bring water by flumes or pipes from Scarborough Park or some other locality. Typhoid is not decreasing, the circumstances being against it. Some time m June last the Secularist j paper, The Liberator, was banished by the Committee from the reading room of the School of Arts. The paper m question reflected m gross terms on the Queen, m what Judge Windeyer describes as a series of coarse, brutal, and infamous libels. The Secularist last night asserted that they were true. Mr Charles Bright moved a resolution m favor of the Liberator being retained, but the meeting by a large majority decided otherwise. Admiral Trvon considers our means of defence insufficient, and that we should have at command something more than merely defence ships. The now cruiser Lusitania will be taken a trip for gun practice to-morrow. A collision occurred m the harbor on Tuesday night between the steamer Australian, outward bound with passengers, and tho Port Jackson. The former was considerably damaged, and had to be beached. A collision also occurred m Newcastle harbor on the same night. There is an appearance of trouble at the Greta mine, Wallsond, and a ballot is to be tiken wln'hsr the men will go out on fitrik* 1 . or not. Tim boys' dispute m the Wallsend colliery is not yet settled.