How do you cope with daylight saving? Do you live in a state that has daylight saving? Do you like it? How does it affect you? In my case, Denyse and I live in Queensland, which does not have it, after a referendum several years ago. Despite the oft-quoted reasons, it isn’t all to do with not wanting our curtains to fade… or confusing the dairy cows!
As an early riser and someone who works from home over the summer, it suits me that I can contact Editor Max or Deputy Editor Laura from 8am our time (9am in Melbourne) and get on with the rest of the day. Of course, the office closes at 5 pm which is 4 pm our time, but by then I’m probably playing bowls or golf, swimming in the resort pool or doing something Max and Laura would rather be doing than fighting peak hour traffic.
This year we left our home in Mackay in the middle of March for our travel writing trip, and headed south into NSW. This was interesting, as now we had to adjust our watches and live on the other side of daylight saving.
I must admit, I enjoyed having that extra hour of “happy hour” daylight, sitting beside the lakefront at Ballina Lakeside Holiday Park, watching the sun set, although we did tend to eat a little later. As I said, we’re early risers, and we didn’t really notice that it was a bit darker in the mornings.
Our next stop was Casino for Easter, where a group of us in four vans gathered each evening for “happy hour”. Once again, it was good to sit out in the last rays of the sun, and we even played a round of golf in the evening there, as I did in New Zealand when I was young. Then, the first week in April, it was over and I must admit I was a bit sorry.
The situation is somewhat different in the tropics, where there is no twilight, just baking sun till sunset. I don’t think there is a good argument for daylight saving there: people are happy to see the sun set so they can go out to enjoy the evening.
YOUR SAY: How do you feel about daylight saving in during your travels? Do you travel in multiple time zones? Did you vote against the daylight saving in the referendum all those years ago?