Rushing to the office to make the regular 9am meeting (8am ‘my’ time), I mentally count how many more times I’d be doing this before getting a reprieve, albeit temporary, when daylight savings ends on April 1.
Yes it’s that time of the year again when those of us in NSW turn back the clocks an hour when we go to bed on Saturday night, or run the risk of turning up an hour late to appointments until we get back into sync with ‘real’ time.
If you detect a tone of derision, it’s because I’m from one of those border households that straddle two time zones, sometimes successfully.
The kids’ school and social activities are Queensland-focussed so we officially stay on Queensland time. The husband and I work in NSW so we adjust according (hubby, sometimes successfully).
I really don’t mind whether we have daylights saving or not, as long as both Queensland and NSW are on the same page. There’s little prospect of that happy scenario with Queensland steadfastly resolute in maintaining its position, and timezone.
I can see the advantages of daylight saving, especially when I gain an hour going home and can arrive mid-afternoon with several hours of light ahead of me. It goes some way to compensating for the mad rush from the school bus stop to the office in the mornings.
But of course as my editor pointed out, it’s summer giving us the extra hours of daylight, with daylight saving just shifting one of those hours to the end of the workday. That bonus diminishes along with the light once we hit autumn, hence the National Party’s efforts to reduce the daylight saving period by a month in response to calls from its country constituents.
Tweed MP Geoff Provest presented a motion to that end to the NSW Legislative Assembly on August 3 last year with local MP and supporter Thomas George in the chair as deputy speaker. The motion for the Daylight Saving Period Reduction Bill did not win the support of the Nationals’ urban counterparts, who failed to grasp the impact on rural areas in general and border communities in particular.
So, from April Fool’s Day, there will open a small window of opportunity for those catching an early morning fitness class or other post-dawn activity to go back to doing so in daylight before those short winter days really kick in.
Cross-border time tangles can also have a rest until October 7, when we’ll all do the time warp again.
