One week you’ve got the best horses in the southern hemisphere roaring down the Flemington straight in front of 85,000 fans at arguably the world’s premier racing theatre.
The next week, you’re 283 kilometres from Melbourne at Dunkeld, where as many as 10,000 punters make the trek to a racecourse with no permanent facilities, no power and one of the most spectacular backdrops in Australia.
It’s quite the juxtaposition, but it sums up this great game beautifully.
Whether the focus is elite equine athletes at headquarters or a battalion of honest low-benchmark battlers beneath Mt Abrupt, the spring carnival finds its crowds. Big ones. Loyal ones. And, crucially for punters, a winner in a 0-56 at Dunkeld pays the same as one in a Group 1 at Flemington. Paradise comes in many forms.
Set beneath the hulking rise of Mt Abrupt, the annual Dunkeld meeting is built on elbow grease. Volunteers erect the facilities from scratch every year, then welcome a crowd more than ten times the population of the actual town. Dunkeld has 688 residents on paper, but on Cup Day it feels like the centre of the racing universe.
It’s a meeting that should sit firmly on any racing lover’s bucket list.
The feature, fittingly, is the 1800 metre Dunkeld Cup. The Cup was first run in 1937, though the earliest reports of racing here go as far back as 1856.
This year, the Cup was won by the striking grey La Zebra, trained by Emma-Lee and David Browne, who successfully defended their title after Rhinoceros thundered to victory in 2024.
Two Cups, two animals, two very different species, same result.
Dunkeld Cup I Le Zebra
The big grey Le Zebra proves superior in the Dunkeld Cup, galloping them into the turf 🦓
📺 Ch. 78/68, Foxtel 529, Kayo or via our app
REPLAYS: https://t.co/ZIa4a02wC0 pic.twitter.com/zMLUCua50S— Racing.com (@Racing) November 15, 2025
Emma-Lee was on course to watch La Zebra stripe his way into Dunkeld folklore.
“I didn’t know if we’d be able to pull it off with another animal,” she laughed after the race.
“I’m so proud of him. Will gave him a peach of a ride.”
Strangely enough, Dunkeld was a meeting the former Kiwi duo admired from across the Tasman long before they trained in Victoria.
“It’s so iconic, this race meeting. You see the crowds, it’s just fantastic, and to be a part of it is so exciting.”
In Flemington’s shadow, beneath a mountain and beside a pop-up racetrack filled with happy punters, La Zebra and Rhinoceros have carved the Brownes their own little slice of Dunkeld history.
