Australia has three time zones. For a reason we were never able to determine, the central time zone, instead of being one hour between the eastern and western ones, is only thirty minutes behind the eastern zone! This means, for example, that when you cross from Western Australia to the Northern Territory, you set your watch ahead by an hour and a half, and when you cross again into Queensland, you set it ahead by half and hour. The central part of Australia is sort of half an hour off the rest of the world (although we have since learned that all of India also does the same thing).

We asked several people for an explanation, and no one had a good one. Most of the people seemed surprised at the question, as if they had never thought about it themselves.

We also heard that the many of the States also start and end daylight savings time on different dates. That means that towns in the same time zone might set their clocks an hour apart for a few weeks in the fall and spring. And finally, some of the States don't do daylight savings time at all (but neither does Arizona in the U.S...)