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If I were a bettin' man, I'd wager a lot of you watched the Melbourne Cup on Tuesday. Odds on you went to a messy lunch, too. Five bucks says you got three quarters hammered. A bob each way says you dressed up like a dandy at Kembla Grange or placed bets at the TAB and threw cash into a sweep.
But a bettin' man I ain't - never have been - which is nothing short of miraculous given the collective efforts of this country to turn me into one. Aussies, the saying goes, would bet on two flies crawling up a wall. Well, hand on heart, I have never expended a single coin gambling on the fortunes of a horse, a dog, a frog, a fly or anything else.
The closest I came to betting on a horse was on the very first and very last occasion I entered a sweep. Even then it wasn't my idea.
It was Melbourne Cup Day, 1975. I was a seven-year-old in first class at primary school. On the eve of the race, my teacher Mrs Toohey (no kidding!) told us to ask mum and dad to give us 5¢ to bring to school the next day so we could all partake in the class 1B "sweep".
Our otherwise kindly teacher explained that a sweep was a special, time-honoured "game" where we could win money during the famous horsey race. And we'd all listen to it on the radio! Hooray, hooray!
I went home that day a couple of notches above excited. I lay awake imagining how the "game" would involve the kids of 1B being handed little brooms so we could sweep up the sparkling piles of 5¢ pieces that would surely be tinkling across the playground when the big race started.
That night I dreamed of buying a scooter and packets of Big Charlie bubble gum.
Boy, was I in for a wake-up call. The sweep was dead set boring, i.e. lining up to scrounge a piece of paper from Mrs Toohey's dad's fetid top hat. The race itself (barely audible on the transistor) was about as thrilling to seven-year-olds as listening to Senate estimates. As for the result of the fabled game of horses and hats? I lost my 5¢ and, with it, any notion of ever parting with money in such a stupid way again.
Over the years, I've wondered what effect that sweep had on the kid who actually won it. They would've been gifted something like $1 worth of shiny little coins — a king's ransom for a seven-year-old in 1975.
On Tuesday, I wondered how much my victorious classmate might have punted on the Cup. I wondered if they had a chronic pokies habit, too. I wondered whether they were among the 500,000 or so Australians who either have, or who are in danger of developing, a destructive problem gambling habit.
I wondered whether they were among those gamblers who are six times more likely to divorce than non-gamblers. I wondered if they'd lost anything in the vicinity of the $21,000 that every problem gambler in Australia loses on average each year.
I wondered if they shelled out to take advantage of Tom Waterhouse's much-hyped and insulting "offer" to win $25 million on Tuesday. All you had to do was give that snotty twerp $10 of your hard earned, pick the top 10 finishers in correct order and, voila! You'd have enough for a private jet and a scooter.
The odds of that happening, though, were most definitely in Weaselhouse's favour. To win, the punter needed to be on the happy side of seven trillion to one. Another way of looking at it? Winning $25 million from Tom would be as likely as being struck by lightning every single day for the next three years.
That's my 5¢ worth.
■ Even though I never placed a bet, I still managed to lose on Melbourne Cup day. Thinking it was the perfect time (i.e. while everyone else was focused on getting flogged) to take the wee Henderson girls to Dads, Mums & Little Ones play centre at Nowra, I bundled them into the car for the trip north. Given Nowra is a 45-minute drive from home, I made sure to suss the Dads, Mums & Little Ones website for the opening hours. Phew, open from 10am Monday to Friday.
We arrived in an empty car park to find a locked door and a half-arsed sign in the window saying "We're closed all day. Come back tomorrow. Sorry for any inconvenience." Cue snot and spittle-streaked shrieking little girls - and moi with a 45-minute trip back home. Fuel bill? Who knows? Emotional suffering? Immeasurable. No reason for the mysterious closure was cited on the sign in the window. But I'll bet the house it was because of the Melbourne effen Cup.