The Melbourne Cup is Australia’s major thoroughbred horse race. Marketed as “the race that stops a nation”, it is a 3, 200 metre race for three-year-olds and over. Conducted by the Victoria Racing Club on the Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Victoria, on the first Tuesday in November.

In Shanghai, it is a luncheon held by the Australian Expat Association. It begins at 10am with all the ladies and the men attending in their fine “flocks”! Everyone comes with a decorative piece on their heads, a fascinator or a hat! Rachael organized a table of 10 ladies which most were Americans. Our dog park friend, Katey, joined our table as she is from Melbourne.

The event is a fund raiser for various organizations. Since it is a horse race, bets are placed on horses along with raffle prizes. The big differences from the “real” betting is the money goes to charities after the winners are paid. There are 24 horses in the race. Each table has an opportunity to bid for a horse in the race. The opening bid is 1, 000rmb with most horses going for around 4, 000rmb. The horses with better odds went for 6, 000-10, 000rmb. Our table wanted a horse, but we didn’t get one until horse #23…just in time. If your horse wins, the table wins a certain amount of money from the pool collected. Our horse #23 did not win as he did not have high odds and we were able to purchased him for 4, 000rmb.

We posed for a photo with the Flemington photo backdrop.

Drinks are served all day along with lunch. Lunch was salmon or steak – I chose steak, of course.

Dessert was very tasty, too.

We stopped at the after party at 3:30pm for about 45 minutes. Linda, Sarah, Judy and I were all going to the HS sports banquet at school. The other three Moms of HS students said the food isn’t good so we snacked on the after party snacks before dashing home to the sports banquet.

It was another fun day at the Shanghai Melbourne Cup. We are lucky to have Rachael to organize us for these fun Australian events.