MELBOURNE TOWN TALK.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 227, 27 November 1888, Page 3

MELBOURNE TOWN TALK.

THE RACING CARNIVAL. [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT ] Melbourne, Novembers. This week I am going to depart from my usual custom, and deal with oue subject only —the races ; for are they not monopolizing the attention of this city of vanities to the exclusion of naught else ? I must be with the times, you know ; and if everybody sings just now of racers “ extended length to length ” why, I must do bo too, or be out of the f ishion. We are now in the very midst of the racing carnival and the excitement has reached fever-heat, so that my readers must not complain if I sing this week of Flemington, encore Flemington, toujours Flemington,— and nothing else. I don’t ever remember such enthusiasm over the Spring meeting as this year’s, and Melbourne has never been so filled and overcrowded with visitors, who are taking ad van age of the Cup and the Exhibition and thus killing two birds with one stone. I myself am sorry enough to see this drain of the conntry into Melbourne, for what with bad times, bad harvest, and want of rain, our country districts want all the money they have. But instead of this, everybody who can afford it cbmes for a jaunt to town, and octopedean Melbourne absorbs their cash, their time, and their purchase money.

As everyone know-? the Flemington Spring Meeting consists of the Derby day, the Cup day, the Steeplechase day, and the Oaks day, —a nice little round sufficient to exhaust the purses, the energies, and the spare time of the most exuberant adherent of le sport. Last Saturday saw the Derby lost and won—the three-year-old Blue Ribband of the Australian turf. The meeting was a wonderful one in many respects —wonderful for its crowd, its heat, its sunshine, and its results. One saw everyone of note on the lawn and grand stand. Venerable judges elbowed bandylegged jocks ; squatting Crcesuses sat next to the sporting bank clerks ; honorable members of cur august Houses of Legislature crowded cheek by-jowl with strident voiced bootmakers ; mashers and dudes exchanged turf confidences with out-of-elbows nondescripts and touts ; sedate lawyers nd medicos threw off professional reserve, and were to he seen darting to and fro among the betting men intent on that dangerous pastime of “ backing their fancy. ” And the ladies I Ye Graces three and Muses nine ! what a crowd of them there were. And all looking dainty and pretty in their new summer costumes and piquant mazy dressmakers’ From Lady Loch, looking delicious in pure white, to Madame Folletout, the Parisian costumiere, present on the course to triumph in the sight of her handiwork ; from Mrs Mondaine, the leader of fashion, to Miss Brown the shopgirl, whose young man always comes out generomly at the Cup time, and gives his sweetheart her one great treat of the year. All Melbourne and his wife were there, dressed in their best, betting, promenading, chatting, perspiring, and thinking more of themselves and their appearance than of the racing.

Truly, all of it, a great sight for fifty year old Melbourne, nut one that makes me reflect rather philosophically on the vanity and foolishness of it ail. I suppose tens of thousands of pounds are spent by the public in this great Saturnalia, and what is the result obtained ? Absolutely nothing save a few days’ rabid excitement, whilst the harm it does the country districts generally is very great, impoverishing them for the time and making times bad. But people won’t learn sense, and so merry games go on, to the profit of bookmakers, hotelkeepers, and the m°tropolitan tradesmen generally. Fancy, on Friday eight trains, all crammed and jammed, left Sydney. At the same time the country trains are bringing living loads as rapidly as steam can do it. The steamers come packed, and the result is, and lodging can hardly be obtained in Melbourne even at famine prices. It is racing in excelsis, and I think representatives of every kingdom, state, and community under the sun are assisting at the juggernaut. It is a ca=e of -the more fools the more fun. And the first being plentiful, the latter is fast and furious.

But about the race meeting on Saturday. A-? I said, it was a hugely a tended function, and even the frying heat did not affect its success in any way. “ The biggest Derby we have had yet,” said the Secretary of the V.R.C. to me triumphantly. “ What a Cup we shall have !” The was really a good one, and the finish superb. The one and a half mile is just enough to test the mettle of the three-year-olds, and makes to my mind the best kind of a race. The horses, seven of them, came in pretty well together despite the long distance ; then just at the post E- sign, the winner, made a dash, raced necl and-neck for a dozen yards with the black stripes of Carbine and the heavy-hacked Melos, and won on the post by a bead, the rest of the field hardly half a length behind. A grand fiui-h, and oue worthy of the day and the huge concourse assembled to witness it. Theo came the little ceremony of crowning the victor. The panting Ensign, flecked with foam and dripping with perspiration, was led wonderingly to the gubernatorial box in the grand stand, and there had the historic blue riband fastened round his neck by the fair hands of Lady Loch—a ceremony which elicited loud cheers from emulous shoddocracy, round about. The winner belongs to the Hon James White, than no truer sportsman treads the turf, and the win itself was a popular one. I hope it may be the herald of another Derby victory, for, as everybody knows, the Hon. James has three colts in training for the English Derby, and for the greater credit of Australia I trust must sincerely he will win it as he has done ours.