Cockroach Race Day????

Okay, I have to admit, when I saw this as a holiday my first thought was "Really????"  Well, seems like our Australian friends make it a great event.  Here's part of the article I found on google:
The Cocky races are a great fun day with plenty of atmosphere and entertainment. The event's layout is similar to the National Festival of Beers in that the hotel takes over and closes Rotherham St. for a day and utilises the restaurant car-park as well, with tiered seating and even corporate boxes, the stage is set for a great race day. The day opens at 11am. There is a street stage live bands performing throughout the day, a dunking machine on the street always provides great entertainment in the hot Queensland summer.
It is a busy day, you can expect to see up to 7000 other avid cockroach punters throughout the day enjoying the races and sunshine. There is a big race card on this day. Fourteen races with the first race at 12:00, flowing through the afternoon with the last race at 4:30. Contestants are encouraged to train and b.y.o roach but there is also a house stable with roaches available to be bought for $5.00. Also there is the best Stable Costume Competition for teams and the Miss Cocky Competition. The music and fun continues into the night.
"Contestants are encouraged to train and b.y.o. roach, but there is also a house stable with roaches available to be bought for $5.00".  Okay, pick me up off the floor right now.  I can't ever imagine training a cockroach, must less buying one for $5.  I'm seriously going to have to make a trip to see this one day.  It does sound like a lot of fun though.

It has been never been called 'the race that stops a nation' but, while the Melbourne Cup is a public holiday only in Melbourne and the ACT, the whole country has a day off for Queensland's annual cockroach races. This is because the races are held on Australia Day. The cockroach races take place at the Story Bridge Hotel, an ornate nineteenth-century pub set south of the Brisbane River in Kangaroo Point. As a sport, cockroach racing has a long and distinguished history. It was founded at the Story Bridge Hotel in 1981. According to the founding myth of cockroach racing, Daz from Hawthorne and Gor (short for Igor) from Kangaroo Point were arguing at the bar about which of their suburbs was home to the biggest cockroaches. To settle the dispute, each caught a cockroach at home and brought it to the pub. For reasons not entirely clear, they then decided to race them.
New Orleans should hold a challange race with them.  I saw huge ones there when I lived there during my college years.
So anyway, have a great cockroach race day, mate.