AUSTRALIAN ITEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 5995, 3 February 1881, Page 5

AUSTRALIAN ITEMS.

The price of coal (the Argus says) is lower now in Melbourne than it has eve.v been before in that city. Coal is now advertised for sale at 22s per ton, delivered iu team. The reduction is owing to the keen competition among the pitowners at Newcastle and the shipowners in Sydney and Melbourne, and the results on the wood trade, and on manufactures in which fuel is an important factor , , will be very sensibly felt. The Melbourne Argus of the 22nd says : — "Miss Marianne North, who has been studying and painting the flora of Australia, left on Thursday by the Flinders for Tasmania, with the intention of taking New Zealand, the Sandwich Islands, and California on her way home. She came overLaud from Queensland to Sydney, and from thence to Melbourne. She also visited West Australia, and after returning to Melbourne she spent a week at Femshaw and a day at Mount Macedon. During her tour Miss North has travelled great distances in a short space of time, and has done a vast amount of work, the results of which will doubtless be seen at no distant date in those illustrations, of flowers, plants, and laudscapes in which Miss North's talents as an artist are so conspicuously displayed." His Excellency the Governor (says the Melbourne Herald) had a narrow escape recently from being arrested on a charge of smuggling goods out of the Exhibition. During the afternoon the Marquis of Normanby was, in company with Hon. J. J. Casey, admiring a gold watch, which is about half the size of a threepenny piece, .and priced by a Swiss exhibitor at £400. His Excellency having expresseda desire to showthe curiosity to the Marchioness, who was sitting in Mb. Pickering's office in the American court, Mr. Eugster opened the show-case with a duplicate key, and handed the watch to the Governor, who took it to her ladyship. Shortly after two Custom-house officers arrived on the scene and demanded an explanation from Mr. Martin about a watch, whieh, they said, had been reported by a detective officer as having been removed from the case. Fortunately, by that time the -watch had been replaced, and the Custom-house officers were baulked of an interesting capture.

At a picnic given by the Mayor of Sydney to the members of the Intercolonial Conference and others, Mr. T>ick said he was quite sure th.at "when the Confei-ence sepai-ated, it would be found they had done a good deal towards advancing the interests of these colonies. He was quite sure that their meetings had drawn them closer to each other every timt they met, .and before long there would be a basis of federation that would extend and increase every year. He quite thought ths.t the Customs duties were one point on which there was a necessity for union to som«v extent; but he did not think we must be .absolutely united on everything in the tariff. before we could be united at all. (Hear, hear.) He should like to see us united in reference to the three or four articles of intercolonial consumption, and exchange these productions, with , ono another, and bye-and-bye sve should iind out what other productions there were iipon which we could unite for ths purpose of introducing them into the different colonies free of charge. He conlt , . not sufficiently express the feelings he had of the kindness of the Sydney people since lie had .arrived, and he expressed a hope that the commerce of the port might gristly increase.