I wish I could take you out to one of the great meetings at Flemington Lawn, the Melbourne race course, which the people here think is the finest on earth. It has an area of about three hundred acres, most of which is covered with a lawn of thick velvety green. There are really two courses, one for steeplechase events and the other for running and hurdle races. The track, grandstands, and stables are all well built and equipped with the latest improvements.
The inside of the ring, which is given up to the people who pay no admission, is usually crowded with workmen and their families. The grandstand, built on a hill at one side of the course, has the first-class seats, and directly behind it on the hill itself are equally good places, which can be had for lower prices. In any one of these situations the spectator has full view of the race from start to finish and need not lose sight of the horses for the tenth of a second.
I have several times gone out to the races, which are held every Saturday afternoon during the season. They are attended by thousands. Flemington Lawn is a good place to see the people of Melbourne at their best. Everyone goes to the races—business men, public officials, and even the preachers, though I would not say that I saw any of the clergy place any extravagant bets. The crowd in the grandstand has as well-dressed and fine-looking men and women as one can see at any similar show the world over.
People down here have a way of dating events by saying, “Oh, yes, that was the year So-and-So won the Cup.” They are referring to the Melbourne Cup Race, the chief sporting event of the South Pacific and one of the greatest of the whole world. Melbourne Cup Day, the first Tuesday in November, is a general holiday, and the city does little or no work during the week of this race. Flemington is crowded with a brilliant throng. Often one hundred and fifty thousand people attend, some coming from points three thousand miles distant. Nearly all bet, the women as well as the men. The bookmaker is in his element, and one hears many stories of crooked methods and thrown races, though how much truth there is in them I do not know. Clerks and shop girls go without lunches for weeks to save money to lay on the favourites. Office boys steal stamps and petty cash, and bank clerks are sometimes tempted beyond their strength to speculate with the funds under their hands so as to gamble on the great event.
An attorney general of New South Wales, speaking of the Melbourne Cup and the other races so frequent throughout the Commonwealth, once declared that
“... nine tenths of the embezzlements and the forgeries and the breaches of trust which come before the Australian courts are directly due to horse-racing and its concomitants.”
But editors and preachers, votes in the hands of women, and state and Commonwealth legislation have so far been powerless to stop betting on the races. The gambling spirit pervades all classes of Australians, from the farmer who stakes everything on the freaks of the climate, to the legislator who helps put a radical law on the statute books with the feeling that the chances are even that it will work out all right.
I should say that drinking is quite as much of a national vice of the Australians as gambling. I know of no country where it is more common. In many families it is usual to serve whisky and soda at afternoon teas, the men taking the whisky and the women the tea. Some of the people keep themselves “soaked” a good part of the time. Scotch whisky is the favourite tipple and the customary way of taking it is to mix it with water and sip it. Americans once prided themselves on drinking their whisky “straight,” swallowing it down in one gulp, but here the same amount mixed with water lasts for an hour. A great many have whisky with their meals, and treating, or, as they call it here, “shouting,” is common. The man who drinks alone is thought to be mean, and in the smoking rooms of the hotels one sees men sipping and talking together from dinner until bedtime.
There are no saloons here as we know them. To illustrate:
“Is that big building a hotel?” I asked a Melbourne man one afternoon as we were passing one of the finest structures of this city.