A little girl named Balderstone, aged one year and eleven months, was drowned on Sunday forenoon in a water bole at the rear of a garden attached to her parent's residence, in Eureka street, Ballarat East. The mother left the child (her only one) shortly after eleven o'clock, playing in the garden, and after being absent in the house about ten minutes, missed her altogether. Search was made, but the child was not found; the neighbors houses were enquired at with the same result, and ultimately a garden rake was procured with which to search the water hole. The hole being about nine feet wide and containing about eight feet of water the mother of the child was unable to search it properly with the rake, and a man named Ham happening to pass the spot at the time undertook to do so, and very soon dragged out the child, but life was then quite extinct. The hole, it appears, was not fenced in. An inquest was held on the body on Monday, when, these facts having been deposed to, a verdict of accidental drowning was returned.
