Melbourne Cup Day

It's Hallowe'en here, so youngsters will be trick or treating and having Hallowe'en parties.
Then it's Guy Fawkes (Bonfire) Night on the 5th November.
But that's more for children and young people.

Neither are Public holidays but it is half-term this week.

No holiday in NSW Nanna8. I watched the race - not happy seeing wide use of whips. But beautiful horses.

I'm in Brisbane - no public holiday here in Qld! Just a normal day, I forgot the Cup was on.

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Well it was as wet as but we had a good time anyway with lots of food and wine. I didn’t win anything but only spent $ 12 so no worries. We all watched it on the tv ,no one went outside but a few of them really dressed up ( top hats and tails for a couple )for a bit of fun.

Hello nanna8 👋
You’re being rather brave discussing horse racing here!
A couple of years ago I organised a GN Grand National sweepstake.
It was great fun, and very successful in the main.
But never again!
For the record, I can definitely see both sides of the horse racing debate.
I’m glad that you had a good day. It sounds great fun.
It’s nice to have an excuse to dress up, you don’t get them very often!

We have a fantastic bloke who organises the sweeps. He likes numbers and is also the Probus treasurer. Not big stakes, the biggest amount won was $50 , just a bit of fun. The horses all looked to be in tip top condition, lovely shiny coats and it was very, very close this time.

My sister is on holiday in Thailand. She was invited to a Melbourne Cup party. She borrowed a fascinator and dressed up. Sit down dinner, music and dancing with the races on a big screen. All before 3pm!!

I always stay awake on Melbourne Cup day/night. I have radio sport 927 on and pretend I’m in Australia. Going to the Cup was always on my bucket list but I don’t want to leave my dog for the 3 + weeks that a holiday down under would entail so I doubt if I’ll ever get to it. I know several people that stay awake for it as well and each year we contact each other. I love the talk of precipitation, barrier draws and roughies but there wasn’t an advert for Peter the Possum man ( I’ll help you if I can tiddly Pom) this year so I hope he’s ok. Winner won it well. I hope he realises what a national hero he now is.

I wish I was back in Melbourne. Lovely place.

In fact I loved all of you, Australia 🥰

If only I was 50 years younger 🙂

What a nice thing to say, Lathyrus. Melbourne is slowly recovering from our very harsh lockdowns and, at last, there is a bit of fun in the air instead of the 2 years of gloom and doom!

I remember when I was teaching in Darwin we would have an extended recess so that we could watch the race on tv. Also we had a sweepstake, never won it though! Some schools would go so far as to ask staff to choose a horse, and dress up appropriate to its name!