LATE AUSTRALIAN ITEMS.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 437, 24 December 1868, Page 2

LATE AUSTRALIAN ITEMS.

Mr Robertson, the Premier in New South "Wales, has stated that the Government were not in possession of documents to support the statement of Mr Parkes as to the existenee of a Eenian conspiracy prior to the attempt on the life of the Duke of Edinburgh. Mr Parkes, it appears, at once gave notice of a motion of want of confidence in the Government.

A report is going the round of the papers that Mr Jones, who is in the Victorian Ministry, is brother to the boy Jones who, many years ago, was found concealed under Queen Victoria's bed.

It appears that the Rakaia was detained at Sydney by creditors on the day she was to sail; but the embargo was removed in the evening, and she sailed.

Mr Manning of Brisbane, a brother of Sir ¥m. Manning, has been fiercely attacked by a discharged clerk to the Bench. Little hope is entertained of his recovery. A prospectus of the proposed steam route via the Cape of G-ood Hope has been issued. The capital is =£600,000, of which one-half is to be taken up in the Colonies, and the remainder in Britain.

Count Von Atten, of swindling notoriety at Sydney and Brisbane, has been apprehended at Sourabaya while repeating his swindles on the banks there.

A fight for the championship has taken place in Victoria. Sellars beat Car stairs after 18 rounds.

In G-ipps Land, a man named Cuddihy has killed his wife and a person named Crofts, whom he regarded as her paramour. He shot them in a cart, cut their throats, and then drowned himself in a water-hole. The foundation-stone or corner-stone of the new Eoman Catholic Cathedral in course of erection on the site of the old St Mary's Cathedral, which was almost entirely destroyed by fire some time ago, was laid on the Sth, by the Most Keverend Archbishop of Sydney. The ceremony was most successfully performed in the presence of several thousands of persons. Several Bishops and a large number of the clergy took part in the proceedings. A large amount of money was collected and placed upon the stone. The money will go towards the building fund. The drought still continues in the northern parts of Queensland. A letter from one of the sheep inspectors stationed at Bowen states, " The sheep are dying in hundred's on many stations, from the combined effects of grass seed and inanition. The lambing may be reported as nil, as, in the majority of cases, the lambs have been destroyed as useless. The couutry throughout, unless in isolated cases, where a thunder-storm may hare fallen, presents the appearance of a desert, without a blade of grass, and all water, except on the main streams and lagoons, has disappeared."