Randwick, Australia
Saturday, September 27, 2008
On September 27 Court and I were invited to the Royal
Randwick racetrack by one of my friends at work. He had passes to the Australian Jockey club, which gave us access to an indoor section of the track and great seats right at the pole. The Aussies really like to dress up for horse racing, pretty much all the guys in suits and the ladies in their best horse racing wear. The ladies also seemed to prefer feathers in their hair as opposed to the hats we're used to seeing at the Kentucky Derby. The race was the beginning of the Spring racing season, the weather was perfect and there were about 4-5 tracks throughout Australia with races that day, so there was a race to bet on every 5 minutes. I'm pretty sure our Aussie hosts never actually watched a live race and preferred watching the TVs and betting on races all over the country. Thankfully, early on in the day someone noticed a horse named Courtney was running on the track in Melbourne, she was a bit of a long shot but we all backed her, and wouldn't you know it, Courtney came through with the win
. We had a couple other small wins during the day but mostly losses, so we gave most of the winnings from Courtney back to the bookies. One other big difference from the States is that there are many different bookies all with different odds on the races, so the payouts could vary depending on which counter and which bookie you bet with. Court and I stuck with the live races and had a great time watching the ponies.
After the last race, the jockey club turned into a full party environment with live music (OK, one guy at a keyboard playing covers, but it was live), and that's when we saw Aussie Jason appear, and no, he could not convince the girl to go home with him. We stayed around for about an hour before heading out to the pubs. The cab line at the track was going to take over an hour, somehow my buddy from work convinced a limo driver to take us to the pub, so the next thing you know we're cruising the town in the back of a limo. We lasted a few more hours at the pub, but after 12 hours of drinking and pretty much no food, we were spent and headed home. A great day at the track and the pub with some real Aussies.
