Australia 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!
I have this sense that Australia and Texas have this "failure to truly grasp scale" thing in common, though obviously Texas is much smaller. Sparse population density probably has something to do with it.
Even lots of Texans don't really consider how far away West Texas is from the parts of Texas most of us live in[1]. There's a sign on the westbound side of I-10 just inside the TX/LA border that I love. It says
Beaumont 17
El Paso 857
Both are cities straight ahead, on the same road, in the same state.
[1] A simple majority of Texans live in either greater Houston or greater Dallas-Fort Worth. 70% of us live in either those two places or somewhere in the Austin or San Antonio areas.
The only big city west of those is El Paso, which has fewer than a million people in its entire metro area.
Australia is simultaneously one of the most urbanized countries, with most of the population living densely. Population is denser than some European countries like France or Germany, for example.
The averaging over the total area is a misleading statistical anomaly, as it is with, say, Alaska or Russia.
That'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"
It'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 :).
Agreed. I've lived in WA for most of my life and never knew this either.
It's a bit strange that they made it +45 minutes from AWST. Every 15° of longitude east of GMT should be +1 hour and the WA/SA border is 14° east of Perth. Yep - it's a long way!
South Australia's timezone is already weird, being somewhere between Ballarat and Melbourne iirc (in the winter). It was the first timezone set outside of the territory it contains. The 45 minute offset is just to find the midpoint between the timezone on their east and the timezone on their west.
As for the statement in the article "A couple hundred people can probably come to consensus on just about anything, apparently even the complete departure from a standard time that the government say should apply to them. That doesn’t concern them. They set their clocks as they please. It’s such a small population that the authorities turn a blind eye and allows ACWST to continue albeit without official sanction."
It should be balanced by the image of a sign announcing the timezone, installed by the government. It's probably more accurate to say that they have the tolerance, at least, of the government, but not the sanction of state parliament.
If 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.
It's on the southern coast of the Australian mainland so pretty much as cool as Australia gets outside of Tasmania or the few mountain peaks we have.
Summer there can be hot if the winds are driving desert air over the coast, but for my time there the weather was beautiful - a few gusty gale force squalls driven by southern winds with cutting rainfall .. otherwise between ~ 8 to 18 C degrees or so (comfortably above freezing, well short of summer temps.).
Eucla 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.
I 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.
> 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.
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.
I 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.
Can 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.
It 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.
China 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.
> 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.
My 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
It is apparently widespread in Xinjiang outside of the biggest cities, to the point where bus timetables are written in unofficial timezones. In some cities you have know whether the business uses local time or standard time to understand the opening/closing hours (although I guess it's usually pretty obvious). To a large extent it is political so I guess probably it's being eradicated as part of the current genocide.
Readit News
I have learned something new about my country today, thank you kindly!
Some people think the state of Alaska is big. (it's 665,400 sq. miles)
The state of Western Australia is 1,021,000 square miles.
(This image is to scale, although many people can't believe it - https://www.facebook.com/theroadchoseme/posts/pfbid02YboSbqN... )
Even lots of Texans don't really consider how far away West Texas is from the parts of Texas most of us live in[1]. There's a sign on the westbound side of I-10 just inside the TX/LA border that I love. It says
Beaumont 17 El Paso 857
Both are cities straight ahead, on the same road, in the same state.
[1] A simple majority of Texans live in either greater Houston or greater Dallas-Fort Worth. 70% of us live in either those two places or somewhere in the Austin or San Antonio areas.
The only big city west of those is El Paso, which has fewer than a million people in its entire metro area.
The averaging over the total area is a misleading statistical anomaly, as it is with, say, Alaska or Russia.
It's a bit strange that they made it +45 minutes from AWST. Every 15° of longitude east of GMT should be +1 hour and the WA/SA border is 14° east of Perth. Yep - it's a long way!
As for the statement in the article "A couple hundred people can probably come to consensus on just about anything, apparently even the complete departure from a standard time that the government say should apply to them. That doesn’t concern them. They set their clocks as they please. It’s such a small population that the authorities turn a blind eye and allows ACWST to continue albeit without official sanction."
It should be balanced by the image of a sign announcing the timezone, installed by the government. It's probably more accurate to say that they have the tolerance, at least, of the government, but not the sanction of state parliament.
Canada joins the chat
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-observato...
[2] https://www.birdlife.org.au/visit-us/observatories/eyre
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyre_Bird_Observatory
Was the weather insane? Queensland is bad enough in the summer haha
Summer there can be hot if the winds are driving desert air over the coast, but for my time there the weather was beautiful - a few gusty gale force squalls driven by southern winds with cutting rainfall .. otherwise between ~ 8 to 18 C degrees or so (comfortably above freezing, well short of summer temps.).
Summer had days that were like living in a fan forced oven. Not very pleasant.
Now I live in Tasmania, much more pleasant.
They have opportunities to volunteer there sometimes too: https://www.networkbirdlife.org/volunteer-opportunities/volu...
You can type the following to see the current time there:
(fixed output)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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY The Problem with Time & Timezones - Computerphile / Tom Scott
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.
213 people have their own timezone.
1: https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mapping/popest/gpw-v4/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_Time
Geographically, France and Spain ought to be on UTC+0 too...
https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zone/new-zealand/chatham-is...
Seems to me it would be annoying for the populace, and downright nightmarish for software developers.
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.
(yes, Afghanistan and China share a border)
They do, but it's a) extremely short, and b) highly unlikely to be crossed on land, as it's along the ridges of very high mountains.
> 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.
I read somewhere that it was to make sure everyone knew that it was an independent country.