TimeOut

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Half time zone

Australia is split into three vertical bands for the purposes of time zones along state boundaries. These divisions run along the Western Australia border with South Australia and the Northern Territory, and the border between the Northern Territory and Queensland and between South Australia and New South Wales/Victoria.

These three divisions are known as Australian Western Standard Time (AWST), Australian Central Standard Time (ACST) and Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST). The southern states within these time zones generally adopt daylight savings time during the summer months, whereas the northern states do not. Western Australia, which traditionally does not use daylight savings time, has opted to do so for a trial period of three years from 2006 to bring it's time closer to the eastern states during the summer.

Exceptions to state-wide time zones

There are several areas in Australia which do not follow the time zones outlined above:

Broken Hill , a town in western New South Wales uses the ACST time zone of neighbouring South Australia rather than that of it's state.

Eucla , Cocklebiddy , Madura and Mundrabilla on the Eyre Highway in the south-east corner of Western Australia (near the South Australia Border) follow their own unofficial time zone, half-way between Western Australian and South Australian time. Known as "Central Western Standard Time" (CWST) this is 8 hours and 45 minutes ahead of UTC. As Western Australia is now observing daylight savings time this area does also, setting it's clocks to 9 hours and 45 minutes ahead of UTC in the summer months.

Australia's external islands and antarctic territories also follow their own time zones based on their locations.