Likewise, when the ACT and Jervis Bay Territory were broken off from New South Wales, they retained Eastern Standard Time. When the Northern Territory was separated from South Australia and placed under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government, the Territory kept Central Standard Time. Attempts to correct these oddities in 19 failed. It also meant that South Australia became one of only a few places in the world which uses a time-zone meridian located outside of its geographical boundaries. In May 1899, South Australia advanced Central Standard Time by thirty minutes after lobbying by businesses who wanted to be closer to Melbourne time and cricketers and footballers who wanted more daylight to practice in the evenings, disregarding the common international practice of setting one-hour intervals between adjacent time zones. Broken Hill in the far west of New South Wales (strictly speaking, the county of Yancowinna) also adopted Central Standard Time due to it being connected at the time by rail to Adelaide but not Sydney. The three time zones became known as Western Standard Time, Central Standard Time, and Eastern Standard Time. The clocks were set ahead of GMT by 8 hours in Western Australia by 9 hours in South Australia (and the Northern Territory, which it governed) and by 10 hours in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania. The colonies enacted time zone legislation, which took effect in February 1895. The delegates accepted the recommendation of the 1884 International Meridian Conference to adopt Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as the basis for standard time. The standardisation of time in Australia began in 1892, when surveyors from the six colonies in Australia met in Melbourne for the Intercolonial Conference of Surveyors. JSTOR ( August 2012) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message).Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.įind sources: "Time in Australia" – news Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This article needs additional citations for verification. Norfolk Island has NFT (UTC+11:00 1 hour ahead of AEST) and during summer has NFDT (UTC+12:00 1 hour ahead of AEDT).
It is not currently used in Western Australia, the Northern Territory or Queensland. Now, Western Australia uses Western Standard Time South Australia and the Northern Territory use Central Standard Time while New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, Jervis Bay Territory, and the Australian Capital Territory use Eastern Standard Time.ĭaylight saving time (+1 hour) is used in jurisdictions in the south and south-east: South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, Jervis Bay Territory and the Australian Capital Territory.
Before the switch to standard time zones, each local city or town was free to determine its local time, called local mean time. Standard time was introduced in the 1890s when all of the Australian colonies adopted it. Australia's external territories observe different time zones. Time is regulated by the individual state governments, some of which observe daylight saving time (DST). Australia uses three main time zones: Australian Western Standard Time ( AWST UTC+08:00), Australian Central Standard Time ( ACST UTC+09:30), and Australian Eastern Standard Time ( AEST UTC+10:00).