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Australia's weird little time zone (2008)
- chrismorgan 4y agoHuh, didn’t realise there was a road sign for it. Wonder who installed and maintains it. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Australia#Anomalies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Australia#Anomalies.
- nirimda 4y agoThe government. They're not opposed to the timezone, it's just not established in law. Probably helps to know you're entering a region where people harmlessly ignore a certain law, and probably makes the people who live their feel like their contribution to the state is taken seriously, so the sign only hurts the state budget once every now and again.
- bxparks 4y agoIt looks like this is tracked as "Australia/Eucla" in the IANA TZ database: https://github.com/eggert/tz/blob/main/australasia#L30 https://github.com/eggert/tz/blob/main/australasia#L30 You can type the following to see the current time there: $ TZ=Australia/Eucla date Thu Oct 27 10:36:45 +0845 2022 (fixed output)
- marcus_holmes 4y agoEucla is one of my favourite places in the world. It's mentioned on a lot of huge-scale maps, purely because it's a 5-letter place name in the middle of a vast empty open space. It's a tiny little place, like a motel, post office and petrol station and that's about it. I've stayed overnight there a couple of times, and the stars are incredible - no light pollution at all.
- plantain 4y agoMy favourite timezone oddity - the border between Afghanistan and China has a 3.5 hour time difference! (yes, Afghanistan and China share a border)
- andirk 4y agoMy fave time zone oddity is that Guam claims "Where America starts its day" but turns out the tip of Alaska does. And the International Dateline in general is strange
- Thlom 4y agoGuess what happens with crews daily Internet allowance when ships cross the international dateline the wrong way. :-)
- LAC-Tech 4y agoChina has a single timezone, despite the fact it is a little wider than the "Lower 48" States of America. It's heavily biased towards the eastern coast.
- gerikson 4y agoFrom my reading, "One Time" for the whole country has deep ideological roots in the CCP ideology.
- thakoppno 4y agoMine is certainly: > Nepal Standard Time (NPT) is the time zone for Nepal. With a time offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) of UTC+05:45 all over Nepal, it is one of only three time zones with a 45-minute offset from UTC.
- SanjayMehta 4y agoNepal used to follow IST (Indian Standard Time) but chose to switch by 15 minutes in the 50s. I read somewhere that it was to make sure everyone knew that it was an independent country.
- soneil 4y agoIreland technically doesn't mirror the UK's timezone. Irish Standard Time is UTC+1, and we go back an hour for winter. Unlike the UK, which is at UTC+0, and goes forward an hour for the summer. They're functionally identical, technically opposites, and I can't help feeling the reason is very, very similar.
- nl 4y agoThere was an attempt maybe 10 years ago to move South Australia to EST (the same as Sydney/Melbourne). For the vast majority of inhabitants this would have been fine (almoythe entire state population is concentrated in the capital) but it failed because it was a new thing and because of people at the western border. They should have just formalised that timezone and moved parts of South Australia into it. Although it'd be annoying living in a 45m timezone. It's annoying enough living in a 30m one when setting times with the rest of the world.
- Prcmaker 4y agoI thought bout that at the time and preferred pushing an extra half hour away from Sydney. It corrects the half-hour minor inconvenience, while putting sunrise at a better time for more of the state, and more in line with what is normal in the eastern states. The interstate business hour compatibility arguments of the past don't seem to really hold in the modern era, but people getting up for school and work is still the normal.
- SulphurCrested 4y agoThe fallacy here is to assume either Adelaide or Melbourne are in the correct time zones with respect to the solar day. Prior to 1895, Adelaide ran at solar time, GMT +9:14. When time zones were introduced, they went for GMT +9:00, but changed to GMT +9:30 after only 4 years. This probably reflected the reality that more people in SA live east of Adelaide than west of it. Meanwhile, Sydney only had to put the clocks back 5 minutes to move from solar time to GMT +10:00, while Melbourne had to move the clocks forward 20 minutes to get into the same time zone as Sydney. (Both changes happened in February, 1895.) If we're going to have half-hour time zones, Melbourne is in the wrong one; it should be in the same zone that Adelaide currently uses. So, in summary, by solar time Melbourne should be 20 minutes behind Sydney's current time zone and Adelaide 46 minutes. As there is a substantial population living on the NSW–Victoria border, not putting Melbourne at UTC+9:30 makes some sense. The same isn't true of SA's borders with Victoria and NSW. And so, we ended up with the current compromise, adopted in the era when railways and telegraphs became dominant.
- 4y ago
- defrost 4y agoIf anyone gets down that way I recommend the somewhat isolated Eyre Bird Observatory. Great restoration | maintainance crowd and a good get away for a three month caretaking sabbatical if you can swing it - I wrote a lot of geophysical code down there a decade and more back, solar panels, batteries, and a laptop tend to structure your thinking V coding time. [1] https://exploreparks.dbca.wa.gov.au/site/eyre-bird-observatory https://exploreparks.dbca.wa.gov.au/site/eyre-bird-observato... [2] https://www.birdlife.org.au/visit-us/observatories/eyre https://www.birdlife.org.au/visit-us/observatories/eyre [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyre_Bird_Observatory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyre_Bird_Observatory
- movedx 4y agoThis sounds amazing. If I wasn't married, and my wife was keen, I'd love to spend three months in near isolation working on my courses. Was the weather insane? Queensland is bad enough in the summer haha
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y agoI grew up not entirely that far, in Australian distance terms, from this place. Summer had days that were like living in a fan forced oven. Not very pleasant. Now I live in Tasmania, much more pleasant.
- worthless-trash 4y agoIts cooler than queensland summers.
- nl 4y agoIt actually isn't as hot in summer as I was expecting: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_011019.shtml http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_011019.shtm... They have opportunities to volunteer there sometimes too: https://www.networkbirdlife.org/volunteer-opportunities/volunteering-at-eyre-bird-observatory-may-2021 https://www.networkbirdlife.org/volunteer-opportunities/volu...
- defrost 4y ago
- twelvechairs 4y ago> ACWST is observed only in a tiny sliver... a total length of about 340 kilometres. It might be tiny in Australian terms but not internationally. 340km is a very similar width to the UTC+2 timezone as it runs through Finland and the Baltic states, much wider than Portugal which has its own timezone (UTC+0), and just a little under the width of Bangladesh (UTC+6, almost completely surrounded by India at UTC+5.5). Ittoqqortoormiit in Greenland has a separate timezone for an area of around 100km width.
- mytailorisrich 4y agoPortugal has "its own timezone" in continental Europe but is aligned with the British Isles.
- gerikson 4y agoDoesn't Portugal use Western European Time, which is the inclusive term for GMT? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_Time Geographically, France and Spain ought to be on UTC+0 too...
- tomglynch 4y agoI think this is more about the population in the sliver, than the size of the sliver itself. Using NASA's population estimation site [1] it estimates a population of 213. 213 people have their own timezone. 1: https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mapping/popest/gpw-v4/ https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mapping/popest/gpw-v4/
- chris_wot 4y agoDoes Windows track historical time zones?
- nirimda 4y agoTzdata intends to be accurate since 1970, but Windows has fewer timezones so it couldn't possibly be as accurate. There is also a historical extension to tzdata somewhere. (Tzdata, used by Unix, has a model that asks what timezone offset rules this place uses at some time, and collates timezones based on common answers: whereas Windows models change by saying that some place switched from one pre-existing timezone to another and only asks what timezone offset rules this place uses now.)
- FlagsAreFun 4y agoIf you’re interested in this odd Australian time zone, Lord Howe Island (10km long, population 350, hundreds of kilometres east of the mainland) also has its own time zone for half the year.
- quickthrower2 4y agoAnother programmer fallacy about time zones I garnered from the article is it is always known what time zone you are in. Or time zones have definitely geospacial boundaries.
- soneil 4y agoI love the fuzzy "it doesn't matter, time doesn't matter out there anyway" northern border. That's detail seems crazier to me than the offset.
- anakaine 4y agoThere's no people, and it's an inhospitable place... so if a clock ticks in the most back of the outback, and nobody is around to observe it, does it even matter?
- at_a_remove 4y agoI was just talking about this! But this isn't my favorite weird time zone, which goes to ... and here the name eludes me ... a defunct time zone where, for at least two years, they changed it incrementally each day to match the sun.
- worthless-trash 4y agoThis kinda makes sense really, its a pain though.
- tomglynch 4y agoA group of 213 people have their own timezone. I think this is more about the population in the sliver, than the size of the sliver itself. Using NASA's population estimation site [1] it estimates a population of 213. 1: https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mapping/popest/gpw-v4/ https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mapping/popest/gpw-v4/
- andirk 4y agoDid everyone have a Time Lady? Often at phone number 853-1212 (or any last 4). They took her out to pasture some years ago. At the tone, the Pacific Daylight Time will be...
- Aloha 4y agoFound the person who grew up in (probably southern) California.
- andirk 4y agoBingo. I miss her along with 411 and calling my parents with the collect call name "QualcommStadiumGameOverPickMeUp"
- Aloha 4y agoI really miss payphones and the death of the not always connected world.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoThis was all over the US, but the number may have been different.
- Aloha 4y ago853-1212 was specifically Southern California.
- bigiain 4y agoWe used to get “At the third stroke, the time will be three fifty five and fifty seconds. <bong> <bong> <bong>“
- djcapelis 4y agoIn Northern California we dialed POPCORN: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/State-May-Pull-Plug-On-Calling-POPCORN-2792027.php https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/State-May-Pull-Plug-On-C...
- postingawayonhn 4y agoOver in New Zealand there's a similar situation with a small island group observing UTC+12:45. https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zone/new-zealand/chatham-islands https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zone/new-zealand/chatham-is...
- ehnto 4y agoAustralia is so unfathomably big in practice. I live in the same state, I have driven tens of thousands of kilometres in this state. Thousands in one trip at a time, I consider myself well travelled in this state, and I have never entered or even heard of this time zone. I have learned something new about my country today, thank you kindly!
- Geert_ 4y agoThat's weird, I did a roundtrip of Australia a few years ago and reading the title of the article knew exactly what it was talking about. I distinctly remember one of the roadhouses having a clock with a sign "yes this is the correct time"
- thejosh 4y agoIt's my fun fact when people ask about my timezone! I live in Perth, and then we talk about this, it's a good little icebreaker if meeting them for the first time :).
- eskaytwo 4y agoSA being on a 30 minute offset comes up at the start of many conference calls
- divbzero 4y agoAustralia is very large country with relatively few humans: only one continent (Antarctica) and one country (Mongolia) have lower population density.
- WeylandYutani 4y agoAnd almost everyone lives on the coast. Europe because of its vegetation and climate can sustain 500-1000 million people. Australia is a desert.
- skissane 4y agoThat most Australians live so close to the coast is not solely due to rainfall/etc. In many parts of the country, the fertile coastal strip extends hundreds of kilometres inland. I think much of it is due to social and political history - only six states, the population of each of which is dominated by its capital city, and all of those state capitals are on the coast. Quite unlike US states, where the biggest city and capital city are very often different. It might have turned out differently - what if New South Wales had moved the state capital away from Sydney, to somewhere like Bathurst or Orange or Dubbo? Or what if inland NSW (west of the Great Dividing Range) had been split into a separate state, with its own inland capital? Imagine this had happened 100 years ago - how different would Australia’s population distribution look today?
- Humphrey 4y agoIt's also mentioned on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia/Eucla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia/Eucla
- birdman3131 4y agoI have to toss this classic video on the issues with timezones and programming. The sheer amount of growing exasperation as the video goes is hilarious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY The Problem with Time & Timezones - Computerphile / Tom Scott
- WelcomeShorty 4y agoCrazy funny video. Thanks.
- taberiand 4y agoMy guess, as an Australian, is that if the government ever decided to get rid of it there would be a large and vocal petition to keep it. Just because it's funny.
- femto 4y agoIt's already unofficial, so the government can hardly get rid of it. Apart from maybe being convenient for the locals, I suspect the real reason is that it benefits tourism. It gives tourists another reason to visit and it generates publicity (here we are discussing it on HN). If the government does have an opinion it would probably be support, in that it generates tourist dollars and doesn't inconvenience anyone, apart from a few people who might miss out on happy hour in the pub.
- taberiand 4y agoOh right - somehow my brain glossed over that in the article. Probably due to the official-looking sign
- nirimda 4y agoHow many tourists are going to drive that far? It's a 13 hour drive from Adelaide, 12 hours from Perth. I've only ever heard of people driving to Perth, stopping at a roadhouse, and getting weirded out by the clock not matching the time they thought it was. And if it was attracting any significant amount of tourism, you'd think they'd be able to support a population of somewhat more than 200 people scattered over hundreds of square kilometres. Surely the reason it exists is just because it does. Legally valid things done in this area are done on standard time - e.g. the polls close at 6:45 local time because they close at 6pm standard time. But it doesn't really matter what time two people meet when they say "lets meet at 2pm" and trying to change that would require an unwarranted intrusion and an unnecessary expense. I'm told the area around Broken Hill is equivalently odd - although there's official boundaries for the timezone there (Yancowinna County, or somesuch) but there's also the actual boundaries that people use (depending on whether they agree that they're in Broken Hill or not). The expense and intrusion of trying to enforce strict timezone boundaries on boundary-area dwellers just isn't justified to the people who live near them and it isn't justified to the people in the capital cities. It's different in the capital city, or on the more heavily populated border areas (e.g. Tweed Heads/Coolangatta area) where you're more likely to have to do business with a stranger.
- kinow 4y ago>This is quite rare, something found nowhere else except Nepal and in a few small, isolated corners of the globe. Visitors entering or leaving ACWST have to remember to set their watches in the proper direction either forward or back by 45 minutes. New Zealand has a time zone with +45 minutes too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_Standard_Time_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_Standard_Time_Zone
- divbzero 4y agoUTC+12:45! Surely, that’s as far ahead of UTC as you can get? Nope, apparently we also have: – UTC+13:00 for Samoa and Tonga (standard time) and Fiji and New Zealand (daylight saving time) – UTC+13:45 for Chatham Islands (daylight saving time) – UTC+14:00 for Kiribati (standard time)
- BerislavLopac 4y agoYeah, Kiribati deliberately created that time zone in 1994, to make sure that they're the first country to enter year 2000. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC%2B14:00 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC%2B14:00
- Symbiote 4y agoBeing on the same day as its neighbours is much more important than being first for new year.
- marzipanWhale 4y agoI recently learned that Morocco observes daylight saving time all year... Except for Ramadan. So sometimes they use standard time in winter, sometimes in summer. Seems to me it would be annoying for the populace, and downright nightmarish for software developers.
- midasuni 4y agoFrom 2012 Morocco had daylight saving twice, they went forward in April, back in July, forward in August and back in September. This lasted 6 years.
- madcaptenor 4y agoIt looks like this ended because they moved to permanent UTC+1 now... Casablanca is at 7.6 degrees west, nearly on the border between theoretical UTC and UTC-1. I understand relations with their African neighbors aren't great, so this is presumably to synchronize with European neighbors? It looks like they do still drop back to UTC for Ramadan.
- midasuni 4y agoHardly permanent. They’ll be matched with Portugal and Canary Islands most of the year rather than mainland Spain, but Spain in winter but then for Ramadan at a changing time of year they’ll match with Azores unless it’s winter when they match with Portugal. If you want to sync with europe change at the same time as europe.
- gerikson 4y agoCan confirm, in my last job we supported customers in Morocco and our software dealt directly with timezones, so it was a ... challenge. I can't remember the details, but in some countries the only legally acceptable date for the start of Ramadan is the direct observation of the new moon. Thus the day when Ramadan starts cannot be predicted in advance. Note that I believe this is the case mostly in the Gulf states, other Muslim-majority countries are fine to trust astronomical calculations.
- rippercushions 4y agoYou know it's Australia when 340 x 100 kilometres is described as a "tiny sliver". For comparison, that's larger than Belgium or Maryland, and nearly twice the size of Israel.
- eterevsky 4y agoI never noticed how many time zones Australia has. China is similar in size to Australia, and has just 1 time zone. That might be going too far, but surely just three time zones UTC+8, UTC+9 and UTC+10 without DST should be enough.
- lazyasciiart 4y agoWhy? People generally seem to like their time zones broken into an hour or less.
- eterevsky 4y agoI live in Europe and it's very convenient that all of it fits in 3 time zones. There's also an initiative to remove DST. If not for Covid, Europe would've already cancelled DST.
- lazyasciiart 4y agoAustralia is bigger than Europe. Time zones are about changing the clock time to match the sun time as you move across the earth. Moving farther means you have to change it more to keep them in sync: therefore, more time zones.
- eterevsky 4y agoAustralia and Europe are about the same size. Exactly matching the sun day is not very important. It's more useful to have your time zones match your neighboring countries so that more people shared the same time.
- lazyasciiart 4y agoNo - east-west Australia stretches further than eastern Ireland to western Ukraine. And that’s an opinion, not a fact. Time zones are just a way of estimating when people in a location will be around and having a way to communicate who you’re using as a reference. You’re free to use UTC today, if you want to - but it’s not generally useful if you also have to manually map out “x is in England so he would be at lunch 2 hours earlier than me, but y is in Belarus so after my 4pm he will be leaving work for the day”
- netsharc 4y agoThere was also Saudia Arabia, where several timezones were being used: https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/196902/dinner.at.when.htm https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/196902/dinner.at.when....
- calvinmorrison 4y agoMy American experience with Australia is that the distance and time zones is a huge issue. They're effectively a half day apart from the US, and pingtimes are way higher. You wake up there and your family is just finishing work. It is very effective for getting work done around the clock and having oncall all the time without waking people up!