The Race that Stops a Nation
Melbourne Cup Day.
Hyped locally as “The Race that Stops a Nation”, is the highlight of the spring carnival for horse racing. As a Melbourne resident for most of my life, I’d assumed that other states merely had a passing interest.
I may be wrong.
Queensland doesn’t have a holiday for Cup Day, but my office has chosen to host a party for the day. This involves watching the race, drinks, fancy dress competitions, etc.
At first, it seemed like an isolated incident. Trolltech looks after its employees, so can also use the event as part of general morale and team building. Then I discovered that my netball team also can’t play due to the Cup, and that other teams would also have player availability issues.
Maybe this race, for Australia, really does stop the Nation.
Then again, I am generalizing from a very small data set. Either way, happy Cup Day!
November 11th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
On the flip side, I happened to be on the top of Mt Howitt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Howitt) in the Victorian Alps last Tuesday. To my surprise, the place was bussling with bushwalkers.
I had totally forgotten about “The Race”, when I had to return a phone message (I may be in the middle of nowhere, but I had fantastic reception at 1600 metres above sea level!). The person on the other end apologised for not being available as they had been watching “the race that stops the nation”. I apologised for interupting, it had not even crossed my mind, as I was on another planet (at least that’s what it felt like).