The part of the Melbourne Cup that many onlookers look forward to every year is media coverage of the carnage.
The general admission area after the last race is run can be a car crash that is hard to look away from - girls with the skirts around their ears, men in ill-fitting suits rolling around on the ground wrestling, boozed revellers clashing with cops (thank you, girl in the blue dress from 2015) and couples getting amorous among crushed beer cans. These are the things you can usually expect after the race that stops the nation.
But this year? This year felt different.
Yes, there was still plenty of 'colour'. There were still people who had over indulged, women who had shunned their shoes and poorly executed piggy back rides. But the ugly stuff - the violence and the vomiting in bushes - seemed to be largely diminished in 2016.
