Melbourne Cup Day is Australia's most famous Tuesday. It's a day when the nation stops whatever it's doing to listen to the race call, or watch the race on TV, and even those who don't usually bet, try their luck.
At 3.00pm AEST, on the first Tuesday in November, Australians everywhere stop for one of the world's most famous horse races - the Melbourne Cup.
In Melbourne, Cup Day is the peak of the Spring Racing Carnival, when champagne and canap?s, huge hats and race track fashions sometimes overshadow the business of the day - horse racing.
Said American writer, Mark Twain, of a visit to the Melbourne Cup in 1895:
Nowhere in the world have I encountered a festival of people that has such a magnificent appeal to the whole nation. The Cup astonishes me.
Racegoers in all their finery under the rose arches of Flemington Racecourse
Image courtesy of the Victoria Racing Club and Getty Images
The first Melbourne Cup was run in 1861 at Flemington race course and was won by Archer. It has run every year since. Through wars and depression, and the good times too, the Melbourne Cup racing carnival has been one of the stayers of Australian cultural experience.