Phar Lap Returns For Melbourne Cup

[k9angel]

http://au.sports.yahoo.com/news/article/-/...-melbourne-cup/

The skeleton of champion racehorse Phar Lap is expected to arrive in Melbourne from New Zealand this evening.

The delicate skeleton is on loan to the Melbourne Museum as part of an exhibition to mark 150 years of the Melbourne Cup.

It is usually displayed in the Museum of New Zealand in Wellington.

It is the first time Phar Lap's skeleton has left New Zealand since it arrived in the country in 1933.

Phar Lap's stuffed hide will also feature in the exhibition, which opens on Thursday.

Foaled in New Zealand, Phar Lap was trained and raced in Australia and won the 1930 Melbourne Cup.

The horse also won two Cox Plates and 19 other weight-for-age races.

Phar Lap died in 1932 after being struck down by a mystery illness.

Wasn't his stuffed hide (and heart?) in Canberra at some stage? I recall seeing it as a kid on a school camp???

I am not 100% sure, it may of been a replica???

I wish I was in Melb to see him.

[whippets]

The hide is (or was) at Melbourne Museum. The heart is in Canberra and is in a to delicate state to move. Carbines skeleton is being set up somewhere (forgot where) for the spring carnival. It's great that they organise these things but it makes me worried that something awful could happen during transport plus dismantling and putting together the skeletons.

I think why Phar Lap is such legend is because he gave Aussies so much hope in a time when there was very little of it (great depression). I read somewhere that the guy who did the taxidermy on the horse used twine to create veins under the hide. Pretty fascinating stuff for nerds like me

[poodlefan]

Phar Lap's heart was at the Institute of Anatomy in Canberra for many years. They had it with a 'normal' sized horses heart. Phar Lap's heart was massive in comparison.

The National Museum of Australia in Canberra now has the heart.