However, this is not the case in all Australian states. The states that adopt the time difference (moving the watch hand one hour ahead) are New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT. In Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory the time of day always stays the same.
Australia uses three main time zones: Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST; UTC+10:00), Australian Central Standard Time (ACST; UTC+09:30) and Australian Western Standard Time (AWST; UTC+08:00).
UTC- COORDINATED UNIVERSAL TIME
In Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory the time of day always stays the same. Therefore, during the Australian summer, a puzzling situation is created: Sydney is an hour ahead of Brisbane, even though Brisbane is geographically further east!
Australia is divided into three separate time zones: Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) Australian Central Standard Time (ACST), and. Australian Western Standard Time (AWST)
In its colonial days South Australia was on a central time zone - an hour behind the east - until 1899. Under pressure from the chamber of commerce to adopt eastern standard time (EST), the government of the day came up with a compromise that put clocks 30 minutes behind those on Australia's eastern seaboard.
Did you know that we have three time zones in Australia? This means that when it's 8am in Western Australia, it's 10am in Queensland and 9.30am in South Australia! Watch this clip to find out why we have different time zones and why South Australia is thinking about changing its time zone.
All of Victoria operates on Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) which is 10 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). New South Wales, Queensland, Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania all share the same time zone as Victoria.
NSW (except Broken Hill and Lord Howe Island), the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria and Tasmania move from AEST to Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT), and clocks are advanced to UTC +11.
In winter time in Melbourne Australia is the same as Sydney and Brisbane – Easter Standard Time. During summer, the southern states, including Sydney and Melbourne, have daylight saving time, which leaves Brisbane hour behind.
Australian Eastern Standard Time is 15 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.
Here's something I learnt yesterday: There's a small town called Eucla, WA, near the SA border. Population: 53. Get this: It has its own timezone, which is halfway between Perth and Adelaide time. The timezone abbreviation is ACWST, though it's usually called Eucla Time.
There are some islands with their own time zones which are small, but the Australian Central Western Time Zone looks to be by far the smallest land-division time zone by geographic size, as well as population.
Australian Central Western Standard Time is a 45-minute time zone. Its local time differs by 45 minutes instead of the normal whole hour.
Timezone Surfers Paradise welcomes more than 1.2 million guests a year. You've probably been one of them, haven't you? Timezone Surfers Paradise is the largest Indoor Family Entertainment Centre in Australia as well as the biggest Timezone in the world.
It's tied between Russia and the USA. Russia is the largest country in the world, and has the most contiguous time zones (successive time zones that touch each other, without territories). Russia covers from Eastern Europe to Northeast Asia, and there are 11 different time zones spanning from UTC -2 to UTC -12.
Seasonal change was reintroduced during World War II, when it was used from 1942 to 1944. After the end of the war, DST was not observed in any Australian state or territory until October 1, 1967, when Tasmania reintroduced it during a drought. The state has continued changing its clocks ever since.
Australia - New South Wales - Sydney is 2 hours ahead of Australia - Western Australia - Perth.
An Eastern-tacious Decision
For those who aren't Greenwich Mean Time aficionados: at this very moment, Adelaide is half an hour behind NSW, Vic and Tassie, but a half-hour ahead of no-longer-Campbell-Newman's QLD. We're also also one-hour in front of The NT News, and two and half hours ahead of WA.
Each year, daylight saving begins at 2am on the first Sunday in October and ends at 3am on the first Sunday in April. Note that Lord Howe Island is an exception (clocks are put forward and back by 30 minutes).