Humidity has the effect of raising minimum temperatures and also slows how fast temperatures drop after sunset. In places like coastal NSW the temp difference between 2100 and 2200 is quite minimal in summer; the difference is greater west of the Great Dividing Range. But in recent summers even inland NSW and VIC have been humid.
I can’t speak for the other places but for WA it has been decided, multiple times, that early sunrises and early sunsets are reasonable and preferred by the majority.
The two politicians who tried to force DST a while back learned the hard way that WA doesn’t like change. This isn’t likely to come up for a vote again for the foreseeable future.
It’s the only argument I’ve ever agreed with from those opposing DST here in Brisbane, is that earlier relief from the heat you get on standard time. The 3pm seabreezes here in summer are a godsend on a hot day, and even still most midsummer days it’s too hot to do much outside before about 4-5pm. DST would shift that cool relief later which wouldn’t be as pleasant.
Still, 4:45am sunrises and baking hot sun on you before 7am is the alternative we live with, and that’s not much fun either. The timezone and heat here punish you if you’re not the earliest of early birds.
And that table @ando9185 really illustrates the regional divide on DST in Queensland quite well - the sun rises in Cairns almost a full hour later than it does in Brisbane in the height of summer, given the days don’t vary as much and they are considerably further west (about 8 degrees longitude) than us. So it’s no surprise that the locals up there are quite happy maintaining GMT+10 all year round.
Yes, the further north you go (to the equator) the less difference there is between sunrise > sunset in winter vs summer.
In Singapore (1 degree north of the equator), the longest day of the year is only 30 mins longer than the shortest, but at the South Pole, there is six weeks straight sunlight in summer vs six weeks total darkness in winter.
While the latitude at Cairns is one consideration being close to the Equator, it is more the longitude that makes DST different in Cairns to say Brisbane with Cairns being so far west (about the same as Melbourne). Mt Isa is even worse where twilight would not start until 6:45am in October.
Yes, it’s difficult to escape the heat of a QLD summer no matter how you slice the time.
Regarding longitude and DST, the end of summer time can be a bugbear for those in the far west of the AEDT timezone. I recall visiting Portland VIC in mid March (2016) and was ‘waiting for the eastern glow’ for quite a while, after 0730 iirc. Much too late even by midwinter standards, though I was fully expecting it being the nerd that I am.
Yes precisely, hence why GMT+11 doesn’t make as much sense up there. Melbourne on the same longitude gets away with it due to the longer days in summer, but the March mornings even there can be very dark.
I believe the Queensland Daylight Saving Taskforce back in the early 90s proposed splitting the state at a line of 151 degrees longitude, with those to the east observing DST and those west not. This acknowledges the differences in sunrise/sunset times across the state, though had the unfortunate outcome of putting Gladstone and Rockhampton into two different timezones for half the year, which would not have worked well.
Mt Isa is a total outlier and really should observe Adelaide or Darwin time year round, much like Broken Hill does in NSW. It is further west than Adelaide but runs on eastern time.
I’d argue put it with NT then - closer to Darwin.
You can add Birdsville and the other Channel Country towns in this mix, too. In the US time zones don’t necessarily follow state lines, so it can be done
Even Western Australia has two time zones year round.
Daylight saving never work in south East Queensland leave alone please thank you
Nice table.
It would be helpful to have the times for the Equinox as well, which is when DST is switched to/from. It might help show the swing between the two, and more importantly, why it’s the best time to go from one to the other (or not).
The thing about drawling lines across/through states, is that they’ll often need to be done diagonally, which may be harder to for laypersons to understand too, should they be implemented.
I still think the simplest solution is to leave the timezone halfway in between, dust-off your hands and be done with it. But still, quite enjoying the DLT discussion this time… normally it descends into pointlessness.
Not quite. Adelaide is 138°36′00″E, and Mt Isa is 139°29′38″E, almost a whole degree east of Adelaide, although I appreciate your point that Mt Isa is a long way West and is further west major town in the GMT+10 timezone.
I think the difference with Broken Hill though is that local commerce is more closely tied in with South Australia than NSW, whereas Mount Isa doesn’t share the same sort of links to the Northern Territory.
Mt. Isa is still well west of Mount Gambier though. The border between SA and NSW is at 141 degrees E. A surveying error means that the border is slightly west of 141E between SA and VIC; this caused disputes way back when!
@Radiohead - I assume you are referring to the Eucla time zone aka ‘Australian Central Western Standard Time’? That’s actually not officially recognised! But it’s certainly universally observed in that zone from what I gather.
Yeah I only heard about this in the last year or so, but doesn’t seem to be much mention of it anywhere. I did just find this though - Nullarbor Time Zones
Yes, that’s it… I wonder how much of a debate there is in the Eucla community to adopt Daylight Savings, so they could have Australian Central Western Daylight Savings Time (ACWDST) - now THAT’S an acronym!
Oops, that’s what you get for blindly quoting sources from the Internet… 
But there are areas in Queensland that are west of Adelaide, Camooweal being one.
I guess my point, as @dxnerd points out, is that there shouldn’t be a need for timezones to follow state lines necessarily, like they don’t in the US. And while I’m sure Mt Isa enjoys being on Brisbane time for economic reasons, the Mt Isans (is that a word?) don’t appreciate that Brisvegans want to share Sydney/Melbourne time for exactly the same reasons.
Anyway, this is yet another spring where I, after promising myself that I wouldn’t get worked up about daylight saving time differences, have failed to avoid getting caught up in it once again…
This. Broken Hill has always been more closely tied to SA than NSW not least because the distance to Sydney is more than double the distance to Adelaide.
Proposed new map of Australia divides on social media
A proposal to join two Australian jurisdictions has prompted debate on social media, amid renewed calls for Queensland to be split in two.
That could solve the Daylight Savings issue too. Queensland moves to Daylight Savings and Northern Australia doesnt.
