Horse racing in Australia is not what it is in England. Like many other Englishmen of sober origin I was brought up to regard a racecourse as a place frequented only by disreputables or Royals, and it was enough for me to sorrow over a friend that his father had been seen entering a betting shop. Had he been seen coming out of a brothel his sin would have been nothing like so unpardonable. But a day at the races is altogether without stigma in Australia, partly I suppose because the climate makes the outing itself pleasant and provides a rational explanation, over and above impecuniousness or compulsion, why anyone would want to be there; and partly because Australians are free of that shame which in England infects any method of making or losing money other than by inheritance or drudgery. And what is true of the guiltless pleasures of race-going anywhere in urban Australia is even more true of the country.

Cup Day in Alice Springs was like being at a village fête. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find a welly-throwing competition underway, except that there was no call for wellies in this part of the world. The sun shone on a brightly variegated gathering – cowboys, bank managers, Aborigines, half-whites, quarter-whites, small-town socialites, bush roughnecks not looking for trouble, teenagers in shorts and thongs, families in tropical linen suits. And all free to stroll about the course at will. There was no grandstand to speak of and nowhere seemed reserved for one section of the community to the exclusion of the other. You could even wander over to the jockeys’ tent and watch them getting changed. And if little men half out of silks were not your taste you could buy a steak and onion sandwich, dripping tomato sauce and oil, for hardly more than it would cost you for an ice cream in an English cinema.

Although you will always find the Wild West look at country get-togethers – even in Cornwall there are sharp-shooters in Stetsons and Cuban heels who come out only for fêtes and barbecues – I was struck by just how many men were wearing cowboy hats here today, and not as items of self-conscious fancy dress either, but as natural accompaniments to open-neck check shirts and colonial bush beards, or in the case of more citified young men out with their girlfriends, worn with a little feather in the side and impeccable white shirts and cream trousers. There seemed to be an inevitable progression about these two looks: the latter had been like the former until they’d found true love. In Alice Springs a pretty girl was, quite literally, a feather in your cap.