After a three years' period of service as Mayor of Melbourne, Sir Male-in McEichan retires and is succeeded Councillor Gillett, who at the last election was returned as' member for East. M-1- bourne. He also holds the post of Honarary Minister without portfolio in Sir G. Turner's Cabinet. At a meeting of the Town Council last week, a motion was brought forward to in-tease the Mayoral allowance from £1,500 10 £3,000 on nccount of the entertainments he will this ear be expected to provide, in conncti+n with the return of our soldiers fiom she Cape, Commonwealth festivities and visit of the Duke and Duchess of York. The Mayor however intimated that he was quite prepared to take the items one ata time, and trusted to doing adequ-t - justice to each without any increase in the allowance, xn1 the amendment was allowed to fall through.
In spite of the copious rainfall during the last winter and preset spring, large pastoral areas in the North and Central Australia are in 2. terrible condition from want of rain, At Coopers Creek in Queensland two men collected 10,000 horns and 15 cwt. of hair from carcases of horses and cattle within a small radius, At Birdsville stagnant water holes are filled with dead and dying stock packed so closely that the water cannot be reached except by passing over the festering carcases. Drought has: reduced this once fairly prosperous township to a population of ten souls, and most of the large stations in the vicinity are left in the hands of caretakers only. This in contrast to the exceptional prosperity which the dairying and agricultural districts of the South are now enjoying. During the past three weeks no less than 2,300 tons of butter alone has been exported frm this port (Melbourne), alarge portion of' which has gone forward to Cape ports, a trade that has grown up within the last five years and has come to stay, and expand by leaps and bounds yearly. It is indeed a difficult matter to estimate the value that the frozen produce trade has proved to the colonies of N.S.W., Victoria, and South Australia,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.