Even if you do not know the difference between a donkey and a mule, the Melbourne Cup, Australia's most famous race grabs your attention.
When I first came to Australia some 50 years ago I knew nothing about horse racing, not that I know much now but there is one race described by Mark Twain as Australia's true Folk Festival that fits comfortably in your sporting calendar each year.
In Melbourne it is the reason for a public holiday and is considered the biggest tourist attraction in its home state of Victoria. It is the peak of the Spring Racing Carnival where champagne and canapés, huge hats and race track fashions sometimes overshadow the business of the day - horse racing.
They call it the race that stops a nation. The name fits as on every first Tuesday of each November at 3 p.m. EST the nation stops in its tracks. All over Australia, millions of people tune in to watch or listen to the famous race - even proceedings in Parliament ceases so that members can follow it.
Nowadays people gather in front of their big screens to witness this handicap race run over the unfashionable distance of 3,200 metres. It is now the richest handicap in the world, worth some $A5.1 million and attracts about 100,000 people to Flemington Racecourse (near Melbourne) with an increasingly popular international appeal since the win of Irish-trained Vintage Crop in 1993, with winners automatically becoming part of Australian racing history.
The history of this race goes back to 1861 when the Victorian Turf Club introduced a two-mile handicap. The inaugural race won by Archer attracted 4,000 people with the race being worth 710 sovereigns. It has been run ever since through wars and depression and good times too. It has been one of the stayers of Australian cultural experiences.
Darren Gauci, the famous jockey born in 1965 of Maltese parents in Melbourne, placed second in last year's Melbourne Cup on On a Jeune. In fact Mr Gauci came second in this famous race twice more, in 1984 on Chagemer and in 1989 on Super Impose.
He started his career in 1982 and won the Melbourne's Jockey Metropolitan Championship four times. He also raced in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and New Zealand.
Finally, some trivia: Phar Lap, Australia's most famous race horse, dies in America in suspicious circumstances, believed to have been poisoned. Makybe Diva has made history by being the first horse to have won the Melbourne Cup in three consecutive races in 2003, 2004 and 2005.