Its Melbourne Cup day, the country's greatest horserace, held on the first Tuesday of November every year. Its quite a symbolic and historic event for the entire country and its such a big event that traditionally its been a public holiday. Unfortunatly not this year as in ACT they decided to change it to a random Monday a few weeks ago which meant we got bank holidays in consecutive weeks, which is pretty stupid. Its still a bank holiday in Victoria though. Anyway, a lot of people no doubt took the day off work today to watch, and gamble and drink, and go to various Melbourne Cup social events, dressed up, and with fancy hats and the like.
In the department everyone stopped work for half an hour and watch in the seminar room, there was a sweepstake and the like, and a few of the girls in the department were wearing hats! Its a two mile long-race, flat and handicapped. Basically its a bit like the Grand National, but half the length, with fewer horses and no jumps, so really its not actually as good, but it holds a far greater place in the Australian psyche than the Grand National, over 100,000 attend and almost the entire country watches so its possibly the greater prize. To be fair I thought it was a bit anticlimactic (if there's one thing I've learned its that the Australians love a good hype when it comes to sport and heritage (which are somewhat the same thing in this country)), maybe I need to get more into it next year.
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