MELBOURNE CUP THE FIRST TUESDAY IN NOVEMBER
Always the First Tuesday? Well, nearly always. It is like a children’s riddle. “When is a first Tuesday not a first Tuesday?” The correct answer is 1875, the year when Wollomai won the Cup, because that was the first time the Cup was run on a Tuesday, with Victoria Derby Day the preceding Saturday, Oaks Day on the following Thursday and a final day of racing the next Saturday. But when Wollomai won, Cup Day was the second Tuesday in November, which that year
ABOVE: The cover of David Lee Bernstein's The First Tuesday in November: The Story of the Melbourne Cup , written in 1969, the front cover featuring The Lawn at Flemington on Cup Day by Carl Kahler 1887.
was the 9th, a public holiday proclaimed in Victoria to celebrate the birthday of the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII. When Archer won the very first Melbourne Cup, a handicap, back in 1861, the race opened three consecutive days of racing, commencing on 7 November, a Thursday—the first Thursday of November. The next day, Friday, the Sydney champion returned to win the Town Plate, again of two miles but at weight-for-age, in commanding style. A year later he won the Cup again, this time on the second Thursday in November. Two days later he took home the All-Aged Stakes of one mile, “in a canter”. Cup Day in 1863 came late in November, on Friday the 20th. The winner, Banker, returned the next day to win a 1½ mile race called The Metropolitan Handicap. From 1864 onwards for the next decade the Cup was always run on a Thursday. That year’s winner, Lantern, has the unique distinction of winning the Victoria Derby a day after taking the Melbourne Cup. The next day, Saturday, he returned to win the one mile Publicans’ Purse handicap. When ‘Sydney’ Tim Whiffler won the Cup in 1867 the race was actually held on the last Thursday of October, the 31st. It was again the start of a three day meeting, and he reappeared on the Saturday to win the valuable Queen’s Plate over a punishing
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