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According to the current tz database, Queensland stopped observing DST after summer 1991/1992. But the IATA SSIM (which I'm currently slogging through, thanks to Gwillim Law) says that the Holiday Islands (Hayman, Lindeman, Hamilton) observed DST through 1993/1994. Does anyone know the true story here?

I know I am a long way away from the scene of the action, but from looking at the map this looks about as likely as Eigg, Muck or Canna having different DST rules from the rest of the UK; ie. not very. :-)

My Times Concise Atlas lists Hayman and Lindeman as being on either side of Whitsunday Island. My Britannica Atlas doesn't list either but gives 20.17S 148.59E for Whitsunday. Neither has any trace of Hamilton.

I have actually *been* to Hamilton Island, and a close friend of mine recently had a holiday on Hayman Island. The three islands are probably owned entirely by holiday (that's "vacation" to you North Americans) operators and probably made autonomous decisions as to what time to keep on their properties. I have heard or read more than once that some resort islands off the coast of Queensland chose to keep observing daylight-saving time even after Queensland ceased to. It seems that no only does each state decide independantly if and when to observe daylight saving, but commercially run holiday resorts can also do it their way. And then there's Lord Howe Island (what a disaster!). I have reason to doubt, by the way, that "Holiday Islands" is an officially gazetted name: it's not one I'm familiar with; as far as I'm aware, all these islands are part of the Whitsunday Islands group. Australia's vying powers-that-be unfortunately have a very childish, ingnorant and it seems almost purely politically motivated approach to daylight saving. I have never tried to get to the bottom of how the dates for the clock changes were chosen but they are *particularly* bad choices. The switch made recently by the south-eastern mainland of the country comes at a time when the sun is rising only about 20 minutes later in the day (in absolute terms) than the earliest it ever rises, but about 2 hours earlier than the latest it ever rises. This means that the earliest sunrise of the year (in clock terms) occurs the day before clocks are advanced. On the other hand, when the switch back to so-called standard time occurs at the end of March, the sun is rising about 1 hour and 20 minutes later (in absolute terms) than the earliest sunrise of the year and only about an hour earlier than the latest. (The figures quoted apply roughly to the latitude of Adelaide or Sydney but will not differ hugely within the range of latitudes where daylight saving is now observed in Australia.) If the populace can live with the sun rising as late at it does at the end of the daylight-saving period then it should surely be happy to live with it at the beginning as well, in which case it could be started a full 7 weeks earlier (around September 9). And in all of this the possibility of coordinating with other southern-hemisphere countries which also observe daylight saving (even neighbours like New Zealand and Vanuatu) doesn't seem to have flickered into any law-maker's consciousness. (That would involve acknowledging that someone else thought of daylight saving first and rob them of the kudos of coming up with such a great "original" idea.) After all, even the states can't coordinate. But I digress... _______________ Alex LIVINGSTON Macintosh Support Computing & IT (C&IT) Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) The University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA E-mail : alex@agsm.unsw.edu.au; cit@agsm.unsw.edu.au (C&IT) Facsimile: +61 2 9313-7279 Telephone: +61 2 9931-9264