ABOUT THE TOUR

Horse racing was first held at Flemington in 1840 – a mere five years after Melbourne was established as a colony and two years after the Melbourne Cricket Club was formed. Horse racing had already been held in Melbourne for the previous two years at the location of the current Docklands Stadium, however some influential thoroughbred enthusiasts, secured permission to establish a racecourse on the floodplains of the Saltwater River, later to be named the Maribyrnong River.

The timing of their request was critical as the Crown land had already been subdivided and was ready to be converted into farming land. A three-day racing carnival was held in March of 1840 and thus began the illustrious history of one of the world’s great racecourses.

These days it is Spring, not Autumn, that hosts the main races at Flemington. The Spring Racing Carnival, which hosts races across Melbourne’s three main metropolitan racecourses – Flemington, Caulfield and Moonee Valley – is firmly wedged in between the end of the football season, the sport invented in Melbourne, and cricket, recognised as our national sport.

The race that stops the nation, as it is affectionately referred – the Melbourne Cup – is held on the first Tuesday in November. And, in typical sporting-obsessed Melbourne fashion, it honours this event by granting its citizens a public holiday. In all other parts of Australia, people stop work to lay bets, hold office sweeps, head to the pub and watch the race. Race courses around Australia take advantage of the focus on horse racing and hold their own events, but with the primary focus of those races taking place at Flemington.

The Melbourne Cup is also an international event and tens of thousands of tourists from the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Hong Kong and China and New Zealand travel to Melbourne to witness the event. Melbourne’s port is literally full of cruise ships as close to 20,000 sports tourists disembark and converge on Melbourne for the week-long four-day racing carnival.

It was in 1861 after the development of a train line direct to the racecourse from the city, that the first running of the Melbourne Cup was held. Archer was the inaugural winner of the Cup and he backed up by winning the race the following year – a feat not repeated for more than another seventy years and only achieved by five other horses in the 160 years of the race.

On a world scale only Ascot in England is older, beginning racing in 1711; Happy Valley in Hong Kong began five years after Flemington in 1845 and Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby, began racing 15 years after Flemington in 1875.

The Melbourne Cup is the longest running continuous sporting event in the world. The Victoria Racing Club has held the event through two world wars, the Great Depression, numerous facelifts and renovations and, of course, through the current Covid-19 pandemic.