Time in Australia - History

History

The standardization of time in Australia began in 1892, when surveyors from the six Dominions in Australia met in Melbourne for the Intercolonial Conference of Surveyors. The delegates accepted the recommendation of the 1884 International Meridian Conference to adopt Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as the basis for standard time.

The Dominions enacted time zone legislation, which took effect in February 1895. The clocks were set ahead of GMT by eight hours in Western Australia; by nine hours in South Australia (and the Northern Territory, which it governed); and by 10 hours in Queensland, New South Wales, the Dominion of Victoria and Tasmania. The three time zones became known as Eastern Standard Time, Central Standard Time, and Western Standard Time.

In May 1899, South Australia advanced Central Standard Time by thirty minutes, disregarding the common international practice of setting one-hour intervals between adjacent time zones. In doing so, South Australia also adopted a time meridian located outside of its boundaries - another departure from international convention. Attempts to correct these oddities in 1986 and 1994 were rejected.

When the Northern Territory was separated from South Australia and placed under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government, that Territory kept Central Standard Time. Likewise, when the ACT was broken off from New South Wales, it retained Eastern Standard Time.

Since 1899, the only major changes in Australian time zones has been the adoption of Central Standard Time in Broken Hill, New South Wales, and the setting of clocks to one-half hour earlier than Eastern time (GMT plus 10:30) on the territory of Lord Howe Island.

When abbreviating "Australian Central Time" and "Australian Eastern Time", in domestic contexts the leading "Australian" may be omitted, however the prefix "A" is often used to avoid ambiguity with the time zone abbreviations "CST" and "EST" referring to the Central and Eastern Time Zones in North America.