Thursday, December 31, 2009

It's already New Year on the Eastern Seaboard, except Queensland

So tell me, at midnight EDT (Daylight Saving Time), how is the Australian reporting on what happened in Brisbane and Queensland in the New Years' celebration?
In Brisbane, where organisers said it would take a cyclone to stop the fireworks, it was a typically hot old night on the town, with pubs and clubs enjoying extended hours for the rolling party that engulfed the city centre and the nearby Fortitude Valley precinct.

Families packed the Brisbane River foreshore at Southbank for fireworks, while an estimated 30,000 revellers created a wall of noise in the Brunswick St Mall, where police were out in force to keep a lid on the festivities.

Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast and Noosa on the Sunshine Coast were thronged.

In Adelaide, thousands gathered at Adelaide's Elder Park, on the banks of Lake Torrens, to watch the city's largest ever fireworks extravanganza to herald the New Year. The Adelaide City Council expected 30,000 people to fill the central city park to watch more than 7000 aerial effects, worth $66,000.
During daylight saving Queensland is one hour behind Sydney and Melbourne and Canberra (Australia's capital city), and one half hour behind Adelaide (which is in a different time zone to the Eastern seaboard), the same as Darwin.

Update: Oops. Adelaide has Daylight Saving time, Darwin does not. And yes, Queensland is east of Adelaide and it is also a half hour behind Adelaide in Daylight Saving Time. Darwin and Perth don't mess around with their clocks.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That sounds ridiculous that Adelaide, which is west of Queensland, is half an hour ahead of that state??!!

kae said...

Yes it is ridiculous.

In Summer, when it's midnight in Brisbane it's 1am in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Hobart which all have daylight saving (DS).
It is 11:30 in Darwin (no DS) and 12:30 in Adelaide (DS).
In Perth it is 10pm.

(I mistakenly thought that Adelaide didn't use Daylight Saving time, and I was confused.)

Look here: http://www.bcl.com.au/times-daylight-saving.htm

But I suppose it's no different to have two time zones on the east coast of Australia, however, if you look at how Australia is tilted, the time zones should be slightly different anyway as Perth and Brisbane is more easterly than Sydney, Canberra, Hobart and Melbourne.

http://physics.gac.edu/~chuck/NewZealand2009/australia-map.jpg

Minicapt said...

"... should be slightly different anyway as Perth and Brisbane is ..."
Perth is east of Sydney, got that ...

Cheers

kae said...

Oops, Mini, that'll teach me to get distracted in the middle of a comment! No Perth is west of Brisbane. A lot.

But I suppose it's no different to have two time zones on the east coast of Australia, however, if you look at how Australia is tilted, the time zones should be slightly different anyway Brisbane is more easterly than Sydney, Canberra, Hobart and Melbourne. (I don't know what was going on with that Perth bit!)