Every year Frank Reys' family gets together on the first Tuesday in November for the 'race that stops a nation'.
They also remember and honour Reys' achievement, the only Aboriginal jockey ever to win the Melbourne Cup.
In 1973, Frank, a Djiribul-Filipino man from North Queensland, rode to victory on Gala Supreme in Australia's biggest horse race.
His nephew, Laurie Reys, a trainer from Cairns, couldn't be prouder of his late uncle, who died in 1984.
"He achieved a lot of stuff really, being a kid from, you might as well say, nowhere, from Cairns, and who went down to the big smoke," Laurie said.
"He first had a crack at Brisbane. It didn't suit his style, so he went to Melbourne, and broke into the big time, riding professional."
Lawrence Reys, nephew of former jockey Frank Reys, who won the Melbourne Cup when he rode to victory on Gala Supreme in 1973. Credit: andypcreative
"He ran second and third in the jockeys premiership down there [Melbourne], which was a big achievement," Laurie said.
"He's done quite well, plus winning the Melbourne Cup was a cherry on the top."
Frank got his first ride at 18 ride at the Gordonvale racetrack near Cairns in 1949, then moved onto Brisbane with a jockey apprenticeship, earning his riding licence in 1953.
Writing in in 2013, Frank's daughter Shelley described her family's elation on Melbourne Cup Day, 1973.
"We could not have been more proud than if we were riding that horse to victory ourselves," she wrote.
"Whether he was your father, husband, brother, uncle or cousin, we were overjoyed that ‘one of ours’ had won the most prestigious horse race in the country, if not the world.
"A ‘Reys’ had done it!"
Laurie says it was big in North Queensland too.
"Back in those days Cairns was like a little township and everybody knew everybody," he said.
"A lot of the old people in Cairns, they all looked up to Frank every time he had a horse going around, you could guarantee they all had their dollar on it.
"So, yeah, it was a big thing."
Historian Professor John Maynard, a Worimi man who wrote the book on Indigenous jockeys, 'Aborigines and the Sport of Kings', told NITV that Frank was an exceptional rider.
"It was an absolutely outstanding ride, Frankie's ride on Gala Supreme," he said.
"He'd only just come back from injuries, he'd had a fall not too long before that and then came back.
"Just an outstanding ride to get up and take out the greatest race in Australia."
Professor Maynard, whose father Merv Maynard was also a successful jockey, said in the decades since Frank's win there's been a big shift in the sporting landscape for First Nations athletes.
"Horse racing and boxing were the main sports for us for a long period of time, they were the only sports where we could really get a go, because rugby league and AFL, there were colour bars," he said.
"There were colour bars in everything. There was a real denial of Aboriginal sporting opportunities, we weren't allowed to take part.
"But with horse racing and boxing, you could get killed in the ring or coming off a horse, so there was encouragement to take part.
"But since the 70s, once the doors to rugby league and AFL opened up, they're the main sporting avenues for our mob, there's been a dramatic shift."
Cairns Jockey Club general manager Cameron Riches says Frank is a legend of the north and that they are hoping to honour his career with a statue.
"He was 100 to one to get rides .. but he just proved everyone wrong," he said.
"To go on to win that Melbourne Cup was fantastic."
Professor Maynard believes the more people know about history the better.
"There's nowhere near the numbers of Indigenous jockeys or boxers these days than there once were, because they were the only areas where we could get a go," he said.
"It's another missing aspect of our history.
"It's overlooked, it's missed, it's forgotten, it's erased.
"And these are important parts of history that the wider public needs to know."
