2 Texans Down Under

This was supposed to be yesterday’s blog, but something more pressing came up. It would have been perfect for April Fool’s Day, a Y2K sort of story in 2008 … except that it’s all true.

Here is a paragraph from a report by Ryan Emery in “The Australian” for March 31: “Yesterday Western Australia returned to standard time, leaving NSW, the ACT, Victoria and South Australia keeping track with Tasmania … and Queensland and Northern Territory somewhere in the middle.”

That was, more or less, the good news. Before I get to the bad news, I need to offer my US readers a few translations and bits of fact. NSW means New South Wales and it is a state, as are Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and Western Australia. “The ACT” is the Australian Capitol Territory, where Canberra is located. “Northern Territory” is a federal territory that occupies most of the north end of Australia.

Now, with the geography lesson done (don’t feel bad, I needed it, too), let’s turn to time. Time in Australia.

Australia has Western, Central, and Eastern time zones. Parts of the Northern Territory are in each of the three.

In Tasmania, until this year, daylight savings time ended on the last Sunday in March, which put that island state south of Victoria out of sync with its neighbors.

So, this year, officials in New South Wales, the ACT, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania agreed to a new plan — they’d all turn their clocks back one hour at 2 a.m. on Sunday, April 6. The only problem was that a lot of people and a lot of computer programs didn’t get the message about delaying the shift for one week.

They result was, in some parts of this country, a mini-Y2K.

Personal computers, some hand-held Blackberries, many cell phones, and even some automated telephone company correct-time services gave people false information Sunday morning. Many who thought they were getting up at 7 a.m., for example, were really getting up at 8 a.m. Confusion reigned.

“The changed end of daylight saving time caused widespread technical hiccups across southeastern Australia, with confusion at taxi ranks and train stations,” wrote Linda Smith for the Hobart “Mercury,” where phones “ran hot all day” Sunday with requests for clarification.

Sydney “Morning Herald” writer Jonathan Dart said, “Not since Hal’s performance in 2001: A Space Odyssey has technology turned on humanoids in so cruel a fashion.”  He noted one victory for older technology: “At Central Station, digital clocks were an hour out, while the old faithful analogue clock on the building’s tower was spot on.”

Evidently hospitals and other essential-service sites coped well. No life-threatening problems were reported. Presumably, everyone will be up to speed on the one-week change when daylight savings time actually ends at 2 a.m. April 6 in the aforementioned states.

Or is it 3 a.m.? I’ve seen different hours mentioned in print. Nevermind, there are bigger fish to fry here.

Those of us living in Queensland were serene and unaware of the angst to our south last Sunday because our state doesn’t do daylight savings time (or as Aussies prefer to say it: daylight saving).

When you get a license plate for your car here, you have to choose tags with one of two state slogans, either “The Smart State” or “The Sunshine State,” which was our choice. Our neighbors think our failure to do daylight saving should require us to label ourselves “The Black Sheep State.” (Those are our nicer neighbors.)

Let’s see if we can get this straight. If, at this moment, it is 5:24 p.m. in Brisbane, Bunderberg, Cairns, and on the Gold and Sunshine Coasts in Queensland, as I believe it is, the correct times for the following cities are:

• 6:24 p.m. — Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong, Coffs, and Albury in New South Wales.
• 6:24 p.m. — Hobart, Launceston, and the rest of Tasmania.
• 6:24 p.m. — Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat, and Bendigo in Victoria.
• 3:24 p.m. — Perth, Mandurah, and Bunbury in Western Australia.
• AND 4:54 — Alice Springs, Darwin, and Uluru in the Northern Territory. That’s right: 54, not 24. These mid-continent places are 30 minutes behind Brisbane time at this moment.

Some of these temporal relationships, but perhaps not all, will change April 6. At 2 a.m. Or maybe at 3 a.m.

I had to try to figure it all out in order to see if I could explain it to you. Normally I don’t bother. I depend on my friends at The World Clock web site to tell me what time it is all over the world.

Maybe you should, too. Maybe it would even be good to check to see if anyone’s changed your local time without informing you. Just click here. Sometimes the Web is a big, big help.