Ian Baker has been making the pilgrimage from the Mornington Peninsula to Warrnambool's May Racing Carnival for nearly 30 years.
There's always a few mates and family along for the outing, but this year the carnival fan from Rye brought an extra special consignment with him.
Browsing through his collection of old newspapers just a month ago, an 1879 copy of an early newspaper, The Warrnambool Guardian and Examiner, caught his eye.
To think I've been coming all this time and I only just saw this.
- Ian Baker
There, on the front page of the Wednesday, March 12 paper, squeezed among the columns of notices promoting everything from buggy builders to drapery, was a listing for the Warrnambool Racing Club's Annual Races.
The two-day meeting was set down for Wednesday and Thursday, March 26-27 with the Warrnambool Cup featuring on the opening day.
Mr Baker contacted the Warrnambool Racing Club recently, offering to donate the newspaper for its records.
On Monday, in the lead-up to yet another Warrnambool Cup 143 years on, Mr Baker handed over the paper to club CEO Tom O'Connor for safe keeping.
"To think I've been coming to Warrnambool all this time and I only just saw this," he said.
The newspaper notes the 1879 cup was to be run over one and three-quarter miles (3200 metres), with a purse of 120 sovereigns. For the record, it was won by Joseph Whitehead's Diamond from a field of four.
Mr O'Connor and club historian Mark McNamara were delighted with the donation.
"This piece is very significant, given that it is from a time when the Warrnambool Cup and the Grand Annual were run at separate meetings, which was the case until the foundation of what we now know as the May Carnival in 1881," Mr McNamara said.
Although a little fragile and yellowed with time, the two-sheet, four-page broadsheet remains in good condition. Mr Baker acquired the paper during the 1970s when he worked in the Melbourne Titles Office of the former Registrar-General's Department (Victoria).
Although he left the Titles Office in 1978 to work at a variety of jobs before retiring two years ago, it was a former Titles Office colleague and friend Gary Barnard, who encouraged him to make the trip to the May Racing Carnival.
"We used to have a big contingent of Titles officers come," he said, although these days the group has expanded to include his son Hayden and his mates. "It's one of the most spectacular races I've ever seen."
Founded in 1851 by Richard Osburne and John Wilkinson, The Examiner was the city's first newspaper. From 1878 it was incorporated with a short-lived publication of the time, The Warrnambool Guardian. In 1883 it was incorporated in The Standard, founded in 1872.
