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!