Border Time Zone

This time zone is based on the quarter hour. Not based on the half hour or the hour.

The time in this time zone is set halfway between South Australia time zone (ACST) and the Western Australia time zone (AWST). So, it is 45 minutes ahead of WA time and 45 minutes behind SA time.

Since Western Australia doesn't observe Day Light Savings (DST), this time zone (ACWST) too doesn't observe DST.

Hence, during DST, this time zone is 45 minutes ahead of WA time and an hour and 45 minutes (1:45) behind SA time.






Approximately 100 years ago, there was a Telegraph Station at Eucla.

This Telegraph station helped Western Australian Government to communicate with South Australia and other Colonies on the east coast as well as the outside world.

In this station, employees of both WA and SA worked close to each other. A big table was shared by a lot of Staff of WA and SA.

At that time, the time difference between SA and WA was an hour and 30 minutes. For example, if WA time was 9 AM, then SA time was 10:30 AM.

When the staff of SA and WA worked closely and communicated the time of messages sent or received, it caused a lot of confusion.

When a WA staff said he sent a message at 9 AM, a SA staff said he sent one at 10:30 AM while both are at the same table.

Due to this confusion, messages were sent with incorrect timings and it created a lot of problems and confusion.

To sort this issue out, both WA and SA Government agreed to follow a common time at Eucla Telegraph station. At that time, they decided to set a time halfway between WA time and SA time. So, this gave birth to a new time zone of 45 minutes.

With this new time zone, Eucla will be ahead of WA by 45 minutes and behind SA by 45 minutes. So, both WA and SA staff started to follow the Eucla time from then onwards.

Decades later, Eucla Telegraph Station was abandoned due to various reasons. However, the new time zone still survived. No Government decided to scrap that.

In reality, for people living and working near the border areas, this new time zone made sense. It would have been an injustice if they were forced to follow either SA time or WA time completely.

There is no confusion for people living and working near the border areas.

The confusion is mainly to the travellers driving across the Nullarbor. The confusion gets worst when SA follows Day Light Savings while WA doesn't.