Not quite the Melbourne Cup

Today is Melbourne Cup day. The Melbourne Cup is known as ‘the race that stops the nation’. You don’t have to know anything about horse racing to get caught up in the spirit of it. If you go to the Cup, it’s fashion parades and outrageous hats and fascinators. If you’re at work, everything stops as you crowd round a TV with your champagne and chicken lunch and cheer on the horse you drew in the office sweep. In years gone by, the traffic would stop in the street while the race was run.
 
This year was different though. Because of Covid there was no crowd at the course and the stands were empty. We watched on TV, but it wasn’t the same.
 
This is the wonderful mare Makybe Diva, who won the Cup three times, in 2003, 2004 and 2005. We were there to see her win in 2004. Her owner was Tony Santic, a tuna farmer at Port Lincoln on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia, which is why we found her statue there on the waterfront.
 
And her name? That comes from the first two letters of five of Tony’s staff, Maureen, Kylie, Belinda, Diane and Vanessa.