TheBanyanTree: The first Tuesday in November . . .

[Peter Macinnis]

They say a fool and his money are soon parted, but never is this more
carefully proven than with the Melbourne Cup.  For heathens and the
culturally deprived, this is a horse race over two miles, with some 24
starters (and two hopeful reserves), all carefully handicapped.

There may be more passion involved in some football matches, there may be
more trembling associated with certain cricketing contests, but nothing
beats the Melbourne Cup as a national event.  If you want to invade
Australia, plan to arrive at about 3.20 pm on the first Tuesday in
November.  You won't even have to fire a shot.

'The Cup' has been run every year since 1861, and when it starts, the whole
of Australia stops.  Traffic eases in the streets, people stop answering
their doors, and no phones ring.  In offices, shops, factories, even the
more laid-back schools, they gather around television sets and radios to
listen and watch as about twelve tonnes of low-grade meat hurtles
pointlessly around a circular track to nowhere, surmounted by rather less
than a tonne of testosterone-deprived diminutive pieces of whip-wielding
frantic humanity. Any boss who rings a branch office while the race is on
can by that single act be labelled as a miserable bastard for life, and
honest staff will begin purloining the office stationery and reading the
"wanted" ads in the Saturday papers.

Melbourne Cup day is an official holiday in Melbourne, and an effective
holiday throughout the rest of the nation, and bosses just have to live
with it.  Melbournites who can afford to do so parade in their best finery,
quaffing Moet and eating the best caviar.  Melbournites who can afford not
to take themselves seriously dress up in thongs and bow-ties, SCUBA gear,
and fancy dress of many kinds, quaffing beer and eating the best meat pies.
 This, they may tell the inquisitive, is because they like to eat horse as
well as watch it.

In the rest of Australia, anybody who can manage to do so will be off to
either a Melbourne Cup luncheon that runs until well after the race in
mid-afternoon.  Those who must be at work waste the entire day organising
'sweeps', entering into sweeps, and drawing horses in sweeps.

A sweep?  Just a sweepstakes by a shorter name.  Imagine 24 people all
putting a dollar into a common pool.  Each then draws a spill of paper
bearing a horse's name from a hat, and so 'draws' that horse.  After the
race, the $24 is shared between the people who have drawn first, second and
third (from memory, the shares are something like $12, $8 and $4, but I
seem to recall $16, $6 and $2 from one sweep where I had the third horse).

As well, most people sneak off to the TAB, once the government-run (now
privatised) betting shop (a totalisator or pari-mutuel) to place bets on
any and all horses drawn in the sweeps aforementioned.  Others try to find
a bookmaker to place their bets, though off-course (SP or starting-price)
bookies are rare commodities these days.

The effect of the sweeps-inspired betting is to put a great deal of silly
money onto horses which might as well have borer-riddled wooden legs.
This, in turn, makes the odds go most peculiar, but that does not stop the
TAB and the bookies from taking bets, or the public from laying bets.

So if you are planning to invade Australia, the first Tuesday in November
is the day.  Of course, if you are from New Zealand, forget it: the Kiwis
have been invading us on that Tuesday for yonks, and decamping the next day
with 'The Cup' more than once, as well.  Now I must go: my elderly
neighbour wants me to drive her down to the TAB.

peter


 _--|\   Peter Macinnis, feral wordsmith, & science gossip.
/     \  Inexplicable events coordinator and former, 
\.--._*  designer of large-scale mistaken identity matrixes.
     v   http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/index.htm