Time in Australia

To find the current local time in Oceania, click on any country in Australia below. All the Australian country names are listed alpahbetically. You will see that all Oceania or Australia Country Time Clock pages have a Green background to identify that the country is in the continent of Oceania. The green colour represents Oceania in the Olympics Flag also.

Time in Australia

Time in Australia (External Territories)

Time in Australia (Antarctic Territories)

Time Zones in Australia

Australia uses basically three main Standard Times. These three Australian Standard Times are used and regulated by the individual state governments. Some governments also promulgate DST or Daylight Saving Time. The external territories however may observe different time zones. The three main Australian Time Zones are as below:-

History of Time in Australia

The history of time in Australia goes back to 1890's when Dominions adopted it. Until then each locality was given free hand to regulate and switch their standard time zones. In fact each city or town was free to determine its local time called the Local Mean Time. But all that has changed and Western Australia uses the Western Standard Time, the South Australia and the Northern Territory use the Central Standard Time. The states of New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory ACT use the Eastern Standard Time.
 

DST or Daylight Saving Time in Australia

The DST or Daylight Saving Time is used in New South wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory. DST is not being used at this time in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. The governments have the powers to establish a DST and in 1968 Tasmania became the first state in peace time to use DST which was later followed in 1971 by New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Australian Capital Territory. Somehow Western Australia and Northern Territory did not adopt DST. In 1972 Queensland also stopped using DST but do use it ocassionally on trial basis. Starting with 12 April 2007, New South wales, Victoria, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory came to an agreement to have a common beginning and ending DST dates with effect from 2008. The DST starts from the first Sunday of October and ends on the first Sunday in April.
 

Standardisation of Time in Australia

The standardisation of time in Australia was started in 1892 whe the Six Dominions Surveyors met in Melborne for the Intercolonial Conference of Surveyors, where in the delegates accepted the recommendations of the 1884 International Meridian Conference to adopt the GMT or Greenwich Mean Time as the basis for a Standard Time in Australia. During this conference some mis-communication also is known to have happened because of which the South Australia ended up with a half hour time zone. However, the final Dominions enacted the time zone legislation in 1895 and in February that year the clocks were set eight hours ahead of the GMT in Western Australia, nine hours ahead of the GMT in South Australia and Northern Territority and ten hours ahead of GMT in the Queensland, New South Wales, the Dominion of Victoria and Tasmania. Amazingly the Broken Hill in the far west of New south Wales adopted Central Standard Time because at that time it was not connected to Sydney by rail road but had a rail road to Adelaide. In May 1899 South Australia in a bid to standardise time further, advanced the Central Standard Time by 30 minutes but disregarded the common international practice of one hour interval between any two adjecent time zones. Later they tried to correct these odd time zones in 1986 and 1994 which were rejected.

 

 

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