Tonight is our fifth and last night in Melbourne. We are sorry to be leaving this attractive, well organized, prosperous, sophisticated, and congenial city that prides itself justifiably on its excellent food and wine. In addition to doing what tourists do when they are trying to learn a new city, we hired a driver to take us on the Great Ocean Road southwest of Melbourne until it turns inland from the coast line; at which point, we flew in a small, single-engine plane along the shore past the famous rock formations known as the Twelve Apostles (now eroded to the “Nine-and-a-Half-Apostles”).
Up to a point, we were lucky again with the weather: The rain that was forecast for each of the last four days did not materialize beyond about a half hour of showers on the fourth day. This morning, the sun was shining, and the temperature moderate: perfect weather for “Super Saturday,” the big day of racing at Flemington, the impressive racecourse on the outskirts of Melbourne. Suddenly, following the sixth of the nine races carded for the day, the skies darkened, winds tumbled lawn furniture, a diagonal wall of water cut off vision, to be replaced with hailstones bouncing off the earth, then coating the ground white while emitting a low-lying fog. Several horses broke free of their handlers and injured themselves. The lights in the racetrack flickered on and off, and the tote board in the infield went blank. The stewards cancelled the remaining races, but the crowd could not depart: the surrounding roads were flooded; the roof of a rail station had collapsed, and rail service was suspended.
The patrons took their dilemma calmly, continuing to eat and drink and chat with one another while betting on races at other tracks. A local bloodstock agent, Vin Cox, had very kindly organized a table for Susan and me in the track’s Terrace Room, a restaurant that turned out to be not only pleasant, but also quite formal by American standards: I wore the most formal clothes I had with me—a double-breasted blue blazer, charcoal-grey slacks, white shirt, conservative tie—and felt uncomfortably underdressed. With no way to go anywhere, we settled in for high tea, and I found a Group One race in Sydney on which to bet. As luck would have it, my selection, Theseo, won by a nose, at 8.5-to-one odds: which put me ahead on the day, just as our driver called to say that he had gotten through and was waiting for us at the entrance with an umbrella.
When abroad, it is difficult to know whether a phenomenon is out of the ordinary while it is unfolding: During the storm, I thought that the weather in Melbourne must be a bit volatile. According to the press, the storm was the most violent in Melbourne in nearly forty years. Similarly, in 1970, Susan and I were in a park alongside Lake Geneva when a sudden storm started capsizing sailboats: We thought that coping with such winds must be a normal hazard of sailing in the lake, until we read the next morning that eight people had drowned.
I just heard on BBC television news that more storms are expected tonight and tomorrow morning. Our flight to Sydney is scheduled to depart at 11 a.m.
