Melbourne Cup Day is Australia's most famous Tuesday. It's a day when a nation stops whatever it's doing to listen to the horse race call, or watch the race on TV, and even those who don't usually bet buy a ticket in a sweep. At 3:10pm AEST, on the first Tuesday in November, Australians everywhere stop for one of the world's most famous horse races - the Melbourne Cup. In Melbourne, Cup Day is the peak of the Spring Racing Carnival - when champagne and canapés, huge hats and race track fashions sometimes overshadow the business of the day - horse racing.