The Nick of Time

Right now it is 11:30 am in Sydney, 11:00 in Adelaide, 10:30 in Brisbane, 10:00 in Darwin and 9:30 in Perth. Five time zones for a country of 20 million people.

Australia is so anarchic about time, I am developing a theory that there is a secret government plan to be the first country in the world where every individual has their own personal time zone. Oh sure it will be confusing having to remember stuff like it's 12 minutes earlier for Don than Linda, except in the summer when it is 72 minutes. But it won't be much more confusing than it already is.

The confusion starts because the states are free to choose to go on daylight savings or not. This has led to such oddities as the fact that it's earlier in Adelaide than in Brisbane even though Brisbane is about 1,500 miles to the east.

Apparently this has come about because farmers have this real hatred of daylight savings, so Queensland and the Northern Territory, our rural areas, don't adopt it. I have never quite understood their argument, since I am pretty sure the cows and chickens don't know what time it is when the sun comes up. I mean it's not like a rooster starts crowing in the dark because it's 5:30 already and it thought the sun should be up by now. And if ever there were a job where I would think you could readjust your starting time, farming would seem to be it.

No matter, it is obviously a touchy issue and isn't going to get resolved. But this confusion about time here in Oz gets even more convoluted because we have a half-hour time zone in the middle of the country. In the winter we have three time zones, but during the summer we get five because Queensland and the Northern Territory have the half-hour zones. (If you're not confused enough, be aware that it could have been six because there used to be a quarter-hour time zone on the border between West Australia and Southern Australia.)

And before you start to memorize all of this, don't bother. It could all change again because Western Australia is voting in a referendum later this year to see if they want to continue daylight savings, which they've been trialling for three years.

Anyhow, we will be back to our basic three time zones on the first weekend of April. But, as you may already suspect, it ain't gonna happen smoothly around here. Western Australia changes back a week earlier than the rest of us who have gone to daylight savings. So now we have five time zones, for a week we will have four and then finally three.

Of course, all of this is still easier to grasp than taking the 13-hour flight to California and landing four hours before you left Sydney. Somehow crossing the international date line still seems like a magic trick.

All this attention to time happened because the US went on daylight savings this weekend. For all of you, we in Sydney are no longer 16 hours ahead of the east coast. We are now 15 hours ahead, and after the first weekend in April we will be 14 hours. Pop quiz tomorrow.