AUSTRALIA ON THE MOVE.

RENSBURG.


A complete change has come to the Australians who are in Africa under
Colonel Hoad. We have left General Methuen's column, and joined that of
General French. Formerly we were at Enslin, within sound of the guns that
were fired daily at Magersfontein; now we are two hundred and twenty miles
away, and are within easy patrolling distance of Colesberg.

Before we left Methuen's column we had one small night affair, which,
however, did not amount to a great deal, though it has been very much
exaggerated in local newspaper circles, and will, I fear, be unduly boomed
in some of the Australian journals. The whole affair simply amounted to
this. One hundred of the Victorian Mounted Rifles went out to make a
demonstration towards Sunnyside, in Cape Colony, where a number of rebels
were known to congregate. A hundred Queenslanders and Canadians were with
them, when a corporal and a trooper of the Victorians saw an unarmed Boer
and a nigger riding towards them in the twilight. The Boer, as soon as he
was challenged, wheeled his horse and rode off at a gallop; our men rode
after the runaway, but would not fire upon the white man because they
thought he was simply a farmer who had got rather a bad scare at meeting
armed men.

The Boer, however, played a deep game; he rode for a bit of a rise composed
of broken ground, where, unknown to our scouts, a party of rebels lay