Queensland's summer time preference makes sense

For years the sophisticates of Australia's southern states (I mean Victoria and New South Wales) have been poking fun at Queensland for its backward political mentality. Former Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the epitome of the Deep North, was often the cause of inflating the smug superior feelings of those southerners.

A particular source of merriment for that enlightened class has been Queensland's refusal to adopt daylight saving time, putting itself out of step with the East Coast (read: Vic and NSW). Many jokes about this very backward attitude have done the rounds for years. My favourite is: Queensland has always been twenty-five years behind the rest of Australia; with daylight saving time they are now twenty-five years and one hour behind.

I have just returned from spending four weeks holidaying at Burleigh Heads, my favourite beach resort on Queensland's Gold Coast. For me there is nothing like a holiday at one Queensland's beach resorts. Sun, sand, and surf are pleasant wherever one is on the east coast. But in Queensland there is something extra, something that Sydney beaches don't have, and is totally unknown along the Victorian coast (witness the stampeding migration from south to north in recent years). That something is to be found in the A.M. of the day.

It's as if around midnight the night fairy waves a wand decreeing that the hours until midday are sparkling and invigorating, that the breeze remains light and refreshing, that the dawn sun tames the waves and warms the sand. Shortly after sun-up, the esplanade and beach at Burleigh Heads are crowded with people, young and old, walking, jogging, and exercising. Slim attractive trainers appear with their overweight charges, groups of cyclists decked out like Lance Armstrong whiz by on their bikes, and a stream of surf boards head for the waves. But the festivity of exercise and raw physical enjoyment had started well before sun-up.

On a previous holiday I was once awoken during the night by loud voices just outside our unit on The Esplanade. They were not angry voices, just voices in ordinary conversation. Curious, I went to the window and carefully drew aside the curtain. A man and a woman with dogs on leads had stopped under the scant light of a nearby street light to chat as if it was in the middle of the day. It was three-thirty AM. Over the darkened dunes, I could hear the waves pounding the sand.

By late morning, though, the wind has risen and by mid afternoon the surf is ragged, the sand scattering, and all the sparkle of the morning gone. The morning is far and away the best time of the day in Queensland. It makes perfect sense for Queenslanders to guard the best hours of the day, despite the uncomprehending ridicule of the southerners.

There may be a lesson there for people approaching the 2007 federal election.