A surface crossing of the Nullarbor Plain belies its desolate name in many ways. This might be one.
It’s not the first time I had crossed Australia’s Nullarbor Plain to visit relatives, but it was the first time I chanced upon one of the more unusual aspects of remote Australia — the “unofficial” Australian Central Western Time Zone.
Perhaps it’s just whimsy that comes from finding distraction and mindful activity during a 1,200 kilometre return drive across arid country from Port Augusta to Kalgoorlie-Boulder¹ but several sources of curiosity emerged.
Firstly, forty-five minutes is a most unusual time offset!
Examining this map of time zones produced (apparently) by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (although with the author attributed as “TimeZonesBoy” I reserve some credulity regarding this WikiMedia attribution) I can’t find any other time zones with offsets other than a whole hour or half hour from UTC².
Secondly, I might suggest this time zone applies to the smallest number of permanent residents of any time zone in the world. Just five tiny settlements are affected by it — from west to east:
- Cocklebiddy, population 19
- Madura, population 18
- Mundrabilla, population 23
- Eucla (after which the timezone is named), population 53 including residents of nearby Border Village
So by my calculations that’s around 110 permanent residents having their very own time zone. Is there any other time zone in the world so boutique?
Thirdly, despite being included in the database of time zones maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), it is not used by the sole 3G mobile carrier providing coverage — Telstra. This means if your Telstra device is set to automatically detect its time zone from its nearest mobile (cellular) tower, your Telstra device will insist on setting Australian Western Standard Time (AWST or Australia/Perth). Customers of Optus or Vodafone don’t have to worry: they won’t have coverage at all…
If you do wish to do as the sign beginning this article encourages and adjust your device’s timekeeping to Australian Central Western Time, you will need to deactivate automatic setting in your device’s Date & Time settings and manually type in
Australia/Euclaas your device’s time zone.
Why does Telstra not respect Australian Central Western Time? Does anyone know?
(It isn’t the first time I’ve found discrepancies between local time and Telstra time. When I lived and worked on Ngaanyatjarra Country in similar longitudes but many hundreds of kilometres north of the Nullarbor Plain, several remote Indigenous communities adhered to Central Standard Time UTC+9:30, despite being located on the Western Australian side of the border. Their Telstra towers operated on Western Standard Time (Australia/Perth) UTC+8:00. I suspect this was to synchronise local time with the nearest administrative centre 800 kilometres north-east which is Alice Springs (Mparntwe), although I am unsure.)
Plus, geographically, it’s tiny! There are some islands with their own time zones which are small, but the Australian Central Western Time Zone looks to be by far the smallest land-division time zone by geographic size, as well as population.
I found this aspect of Australia’s Nullarbor Plain quite quirky. I hope you enjoyed reading about it.
¹ Check out the linked website that looks like it is still partying like it’s 1999! One might suggest that far from having its own time zone, this might be evidence that time on the Nullarbor has stopped altogether…
² A correction. There are 2 other time zones with a 15 minute offset: Nepal and the Pacific Chatham Islands archipelago, 800 km east of the New Zealand Aotearoa South Island Te Waipounamu. Thanks to @BobScheurle on Twitter for this correction.
