Not knowing or caring much about horse racing (despite growing up next to the racetrack at Del Mar, "where the surf meets the turf") and uninterested in dressing up, I note that footage of the 1893 Melbourne Cup is the oldest surviving film anywhere.
The Melbourne Cup was already the most important day of the year in the 19th century. Here's a tribute from Mark Twain in 1895 (from an excerpt in today's Age, source also of the picture at right):
The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It would be difficult to overstate its importance. It overshadows all other holidays and specialized days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies. Overshadows them? I might almost say it blots them out. Each of them gets attention, but not everybody's; each of them evokes interest, but not everybody's; each of them rouses enthusiasm, but not everybody's; in each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is a matter of habit and custom, and another part of it is official and perfunctory. Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an enthusiasm which are universal and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup Day is supreme - it has no rival. I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, which can be named by that large name Supreme. I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, whose approach fires the whole land with a conflagration of conversation and preparation and anticipation and jubilation. No day save this one; but this one does it.Not everyone is a racing fan, as a delightfully peevish piece by Jim Schembri, also in today's Age, attests: [H]ow did cup day come to be emblematic of what an egalitarian utopia Australia is supposed to be?
"People's Day" they call it, all because bods who don't usually go to the races turn up by the rented mini-bus load to eat cold chicken and drink cheap champagne off the grass. The hard truth is that the Melbourne Cup shows just how deeply in love Australian society is with the English class system. It's the most vulgar display of the social pecking order there is with its VIP parties, its nobody celebrities, its corporate marquees, its members-only bar, its exclusive invite lists and its car park and public lawn where the plebs can tell each other what a classless wonderland they live in as they get soaked in the rain. If anything, the Melbourne Cup proves just how totally uninterested Australia is in ever cutting its ties with Mother England.Of course I suppose it is nice to have all this to distract me and save my fingernails from being gnawed to the bone with worry over the US midterm elections.
