When is Picnic Day?

A holiday whose brief is in the name

Picnic Day is a Northern Territory public holiday on the first Monday in August. It began as an annual picnic day for railway workers in the Territory, and the name survived long after the trains it was tied to. Today it coincides with Darwin Cup Day, the Territory's biggest horse race, and with the Harts Range races in Central Australia, so the day is as much about the track as the picnic rug.

It falls in the middle of the dry season, the best weather of the Top End year, and comes at the end of the run of regional show days: Alice Springs, Tennant Creek, Katherine and Darwin each have a Friday show holiday in July, and Picnic Day follows them in August.

Planning around it

As a Monday holiday it always creates a three-day weekend. For Darwin workers it sits close to the Darwin Show Day Friday in late July, so a single week of leave between them can turn into a ten-day break, and the planner will show the exact combination for each year. Picnic Day applies across the whole Territory, unlike the show days, which are local.

Darwin Cup Day

For most Territorians the day is synonymous with the Darwin Cup, the final day of the Darwin Cup Carnival at Fannie Bay. The carnival runs for several weeks through July and the Cup itself is run on Picnic Day, making it one of two public holidays in Australia, with Melbourne Cup Day, that coincide with a major horse race. In Central Australia the Harts Range Bush Sports Weekend fills the same long weekend.

The holiday is fixed in the NT Public Holidays Act, so the date is known for any year without waiting on a proclamation, and it is one of the Territory-wide days that this site counts in full for the planner.