The Bombala races for real

Since the abortive trip to the races at Bombala last weekend, the weather has been great, with lots of sun and blue sky.  It was a great contrast to he horrible weather last weekend, and we heard that the races had been transferred to the following weekend.

Unfortunately the weather on Saturday was again rotten - an island of unpleasantness in otherwise nice days.  I reckon the people of Bombala were being punished for something.  Maybe serving warm beer or overcharging tourists.

All day the black clouds came rolling over us, bringing more and more rain.   The only races that weren't rained on were the first and the last.  Which was very fortunate for us.  You see, the Women in Racing association that Karyn is a member of was sponsoring the first race, and because we were the only ones making the trek back down to Bombala this weekend, Karyn got asked to make the trophy presentation to the winner.  She did a fantastic job.

Here she is with the President of the Bombala Jockey Club - Graeme Payten.

We were surprised later when Karyn and Penny were asked to help judge the "fashions on the field" competition.  I reckon that anyone who gets dressed up for a country race meeting in the pouring rain deserves a medal.  Here is Karyn and Penny with Barbara Joseph who formed the judging committee.

Here was the final winner.

 Our horse, Diamond Jay was running in the last race, which was brought forward 15 minutes to try and avoid an approaching stormfront.  Here is the result.

Diamond Jay won by a long neck.
It's not the best photo because of the need to use a fast shutter speed in very poor light.

This time Karyn had to accept the trophy instead of presenting it.  Unfortunately just as she took the microphone the rain poured down and the crowd ran away.  But she and Penny didn't care.  It's always the win that counts.

Just a few miscellaneous photos.

Rain closing in before the last race.

A trip to nowhere in particular

Today we were supposed to go the races at Bombala.   Bombala is a small town about an hour south of Cooma, which itself is about 2 hours south of Canberra.

Bombala has a single race day each year as a major fund-raiser for the local schools, emergency services, rural fire brigade, etc.  The racecourse is actually just a pub with a racetrack attached.  This is what it was like the last time we went in 2002.

Anyway, Karyn is in a club called “Women in Racing” that does regular trips to events like this, so we decided to go along and avoid having to drive ourselves.  However, when we got to the bus at 7:30am we were told that the races were cancelled because of the recent heavy rains and the predictions for further rain during the day.  It was a further disappointment for us because one of our horses, Diamond Jay, was going to be racing there.

Nevertheless, the trip was still on they said.  They would find somewhere for us to go – like a kind of mystery bus trip.

It was a great trip, with lots of alcohol involved, starting at around 8am.  I took pictures of Karyn all day and night with a champagne glass in her hand at each time.  But she refused to let me put the pictures up here.

So we ended up at a little place south of Bombala called Delegate.  It can’t be too far from the Snowy mountains because it was so bloody cold.

Here are some pictures of the place.

As you can see, the town is really just a pub with a few other buildings for company.  Most of which seemed abandoned.

So we spent the best part of the day in the local pub, which fortunately had its own TAB and plenty of TVs showing the Sydney and Melbourne races.

All day the weather changed from sun, to sleet, to snow, and back to sun.  The temperature was close to freezing all day.  And the wind was about 50-60 km/h – so the snow and sleet was blown horizontal.  I was only about to get out once for a walk, and even then I couldn’t go far because the next sleet/snow shower was never more that about 15 minutes away.

But the group of people we were with were fun and we had a great day.

There be dragons

I was walking near the Canberra Centre today when I saw a fire-breathing dragon.

Although you can't see it in this picture, there were flames coming out of its nose.