MELBOURNE TOWN TALK.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 195, 13 September 1888, Page 2

MELBOURNE TOWN TALK.

After numerous unsuccessful attempts to establish a second evening paper in Melbourne, I hear in press circles that this will be shortly accomplished. Most of my readers will remember Mr James Thomson, whom we sent home as our Victorian representative to the Indian and Colonial Exhibition—otherwise the “ Colinderies. ” Well, this is the gentleman who comes forward, wi f h a strong directorate and plenty of money, to publish about Cup time the first issue of the Evening Standard. It has always been a puzzle to pressmen bow it is that Melbourne could not support two evening papers, but such has been the case. There have been many trials, but not one has been successful, and the Herald has practically ruled the roost alone for a long time. It is not in any way a brilliant journal, and often contains risque matters not always the best reading for the domestic hearth. I hear also that we are to have a new weekly society journal. It will emanate from a first-class offic=, and be well conducted, and I shall be glad if it takes the place of the feeble weekly that now pretends to be a reflex of Melbourne fashionable doings.

Nothing new has transpired in regard to the Exhibition. Completion is still going on notably in the French and Machinery Courts, which are the most backward of all. A great scandal has occurred in the New South Wales Court. It seems that for a long time past tins of preserves, preserved meats, and other goods have been mysteriously disappearing ; and it has been discovered that two prominent officials of the N.S.W. Commissioners are the rascally thieves, more shame to them. They are to be dismissed, I hear, j but further than that the affair will be hushed ] up. I noticed, by-the-way, that theCommis- 4 sioners at their last meeting decided that the attendants employed by them should work from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on one day, and 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. on the next, so that they have to work 11 hours one day and 15 the next, or an average of 13 hours all through the week. It strikes me, in a country where eight hours constitutes the day's work by Act of Parliament, this is a direct infringment of the law.

By-the-way, I think the advertisement of a certain brewery here reaches the climax of bathos, It is to be seen in the Exhibition in the shape of a large placard. Sir Henry Loch is shewn with one leg thrown on the counter of a bar room in the free-and easy fashion peculiar to vice royalty. Sir William Robinson is pictured in a listening attitude, glass in hand ; whilst Lord Carrington, sitting in state on an up-ended beer barrel, appears to wait with some impatience for the order to “ fill 'em’up again.” It is a scurrilous placard to place in such a prominent position ; but, as a friend of mine said, looking at it, “ Who will say now that Governors have not their uses!”