The Melbourne Cup: Australian identity and secular pilgrimage

Abstract

Recent sociology of religion has emphasized the collapse of the sacred into the secular, and noted the shift in Western identity-formation from stable, institutional, religious sources of identity to fluid, individualist, consumerist sources of identity. One significant consequence of these changes is the sacralization of secular phenomena such as sport and shopping, and the corresponding commercialization of religious phenomena. This essay analyses the place of the Melbourne Cup, an annual horse racing event held on the first Tuesday of November, in contemporary Australian identity-formation. Further, it explores the ways in which attendance at the Cup and other modes of participation in the race, which might be viewed as ‘secular’ activities, have become quasi-religious or ‘spiritual’. Pilgrimage best characterizes attendance at the Cup; and observance of the Cup's traditions (sweepstakes, ceasing work for the duration of the race, champagne breakfasts) are best understood as postmodern consumerist rituals for individual Australians, reinforcing personal identity.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Wayne Peake (University of Technology, Sydney) and Kristine Toohey (Griffith University) for their feedback on the horse racing industry, and Alex Norman and Dominique Wilson (University of Sydney) for their invaluable research assistance.

Notes

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² Dunstan, Sports, 49.

³ Twain, ‘Following the Equator’, 161–2.

⁴ Lyon, Jesus in Disneyland, 88.

⁵ Digance, ‘Religious and Secular Pilgrimage’.

⁶ Cashman, Sport in the National Imagination, 33.

⁷ Dunstan, Sports, 43.

⁸ Cashman, Sport in the National Imagination, 36.

⁹ Painter and Waterhouse, The Principal Club, 3, 17.

¹⁰ Peake, ‘Significance of Unregistered Proprietary Pony Racing’, 2.

¹¹ Painter and Waterhouse, The Principal Club, 19.

¹² Bernstein, First Tuesday in November, 22.

¹³ Shepherd, Australian Sporting Almanac.

¹⁴ Bernstein, First Tuesday in November, 138, 284, 22.

¹⁵ Martin, Robert Menzies.

¹⁶ Phillips and Smith, ‘What is “Australian”?’

¹⁷ Bellah, ‘Civil Religion in America’.

¹⁸ McClay ‘The Soul of a Nation’, 9.

¹⁹ Crouter, ‘Beyond Bellah’.

²⁰ AMES, Easynews.

²¹ P. Karvelas, ‘Race that Stops Nation Could Stop Your Citizenship’. The Weekend Australian, April 29–30, 2005, 8.

²² Hansard, No.109, June 21, 2006, at www.aph.gov.au/house/info/notpaper.

²³ Cashman, Sport in the National Imagination, 34; Bernstein, First Tuesday in November, 149.

²⁴ Cassidy, ‘Arab Dimensions to British Racehorse Breeding’, 13, 18.

²⁵ Edwards, The Encyclopedia of the Horse.

²⁶ Painter and Waterhouse, The Principal Club, 177–9.

²⁷ Brown, The Cult of the Saints.

²⁸ Gould, Landed at Last, 207.

²⁹ Cavanough and Davies, The Melbourne Cup.

³⁰ de Lore, Melbourne Cup Winners, 45.

³¹ www.museum.vic.gov.au; Champions Australian Racing Museum and Hall of Fame, www.racingmuseum.com.au.

³² www.museum.vic.gov.au.

³³ Maslin, ‘“Phar Lap”’.

³⁴ Rita Kempley. ‘The Lighthorsemen’. Washington Post, April 30, 1988. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/thelighthorsemenpgkempley_a0ca13.htm. It is interesting to note that a film about the first Melbourne Cup winner was also made in the 1980s. ‘Archer’ (1985) was a made-for-television feature (also known as ‘Archer's Adventure’) directed by Denny Lawrence and starring popular Australian television actor Brett Climo. As virtually nothing is known about Archer, the story is substantially fiction, with Archer's historically-attested victory in the 1861 Cup as the climax.

³⁵ Lyon, Jesus in Disneyland, 79.

³⁶ Mandle, ‘Cricket and Australian Nationalism’, 224.

³⁷ Demerath, ‘Varieties of Sacred Experience’, 4; Chidester, ‘The Church of Baseball’.

³⁸ Quotation from Cusack and Digance, ‘“Shopping for a Self”’, 231.

³⁹ de Lore, Melbourne Cup Winners, 10.

⁴⁰ Digance, ‘Religious and Secular Pilgrimage’.

⁴¹ T. Bourke, ‘Looking Back on a Racy Century’. The Age, October 2, 2004. www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/10/01/1096527928498.html?from = storylhs.

⁴² ‘The Track’, at www.abc.net.au/thetrack/default.htm.

⁴³ Superstitious gambling practices have been observed first-hand over a period of many years by Justine Digance, who has worked part-time at the on-course totalisator in both Sydney and Melbourne (including in the Members' Stand on Melbourne Cup Day).

⁴⁴ Windross, ‘The Luck of the Draw’, 67–8; Rankin, ‘The History of Probability’, 484.

⁴⁵ http://www.lonelyplanet.com/journeys/feature/melbourne_cup05.cfm.

⁴⁶ Cartledge, ‘The Greek Religious Festivals’.

⁴⁷ Carrette and King, Selling Spirituality, 19–20; Bruce, God is Dead, 10–26.

⁴⁸ Berger, The Social Reality of Religion, 107.

⁴⁹ Possamai, Religion and Popular Culture, 121–33; Carrette and King, Selling Spirituality, 53.

⁵⁰ Lyon, Jesus in Disneyland, 12.

⁵¹ Bernstein, The First Tuesday in November, 15.

⁵² ‘Australian Traditions’, www.convictcreations.com.culture/traditions.htm.

⁵³ Peake, ‘The Significance of Unregistered Proprietary Pony Racing’, 9, 13.

⁵⁴ Baudrillard, Simulations.

⁵⁵ ‘They Still Call Australia Home’ at www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/legcon_ctte/expatso3/report/index.htm; Possamai, Religion and Popular Culture, 135–55.

⁵⁶ Carrette and King, Selling Spirituality, 125; Worthington, National Exuberance, 7.

⁵⁷ Racing Victoria Ltd, Spring Racing Carnival Economic Benefit Report 2005. 2006. www.springracingcarnival.com.au/media/documents/SRCexec.pdf.

⁵⁸ Peake, ‘The Significance of Unregistered Proprietary Pony Racing’.

⁵⁹ Bouma and Lennon, ‘Estimating the Extent of Religious and Spiritual Activity’.

⁶⁰ Carrette and King, Selling Spirituality, 47.

⁶¹ Turner, ‘The Center Out There’; Cusack and Digance, ‘“Shopping for a Self”’.

⁶² White, Inventing Australia.

⁶³ Karvelas, ‘Race that Stops Nation Could Stop Your Citizenship’, 8.

⁶⁴ Possamai, Religion and Popular Culture, 19.