There really aren’t all that many time zones across Australia. My apologies to Cat, Helen, Jenny, Glenda, Ruth and all you other true children of this marvelous country, but your time zones are nuts.
Totally and completely nuts.
30 Minutes? Why?
Obviously cruising around the northern part of the country was easy since we were being gifted with hours back multiple times so the challenge has been in the last few days. At least so far all the time zone changes are done on the sea days so people don’t have an excuse for missing tours, ships, other conveyances or friends.
Perth was fine as was Freemantel but then we started into this series of insanity. No one thought anything of it (except that it was silly) when we jumped ahead 30 minutes the night we left Esperance. Then we visited Adelaide (with its guilty 30 minutes). With one sea day between – that night we lost 90 minutes. That is right – an hour and a half. Then there was another hour the following night. Which means, as far as I can tell, that Melbourne is on Sydney normal time.
[Note to all, I don’t even want the headache of trying to figure out the presence or absence of daylight savings time Downunder. I can’t even keep track of it in the Northern Hemisphere where the UK and Germany change at different times; I have children in three time zones in the US, one of whom lives in a state where they don’t play with time changes). Just when I thought I had it figured out up north, I have this feeling that I am missing something here.
This ship also does changes at night, rather than noon. By today when we had lost another hour in preparation for New Zealand both staff and cruisers are all walking zombies.
I really didn’t understand the noon thing early (Noon becomes 1300) but it makes sense. People get one hour less in which to consume food which benefits everyone and only the minimal night staff loses an hour of sleep as apposed to the 95% of passengers and crew who don’t sleep during the day.
I can maybe understand that there would be a lot of confusion with the 30 minute increments if they were accomplished during the day. But morning coming earlier and earlier with less and less sleep just isn’t working.
