How are yearly months defined in Australia\NZ versus Europe/USA?

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

The sun will travel from east to west in both hemispheres. The earth still rotates in one direction. If you're facing north, you'll see the sun move from right to left in either hemisphere.

 

It is currently winter in New Zealand so the sun appears low in the sky looking north and travels from right to left....if you look south you won't see the sun.

 

Same in Canada in the winter, looking south the sun travels from left to right and if you look north you won't see the sun. 

 

Also a half moon is the other way around depending if you are looking north at it from New Zealand or south at it from Canada. The right side is shaded in New Zealand and the left side is shaded in Canada (or vice versa). This comes down to the angle you are looking up at it.

 

 

 

One thing that really confuses me is the date format difference.  In Australia we use dd/mm/yy, whereas in the States its mm/dd/yy. 

 

I agree this is annoying too....The best solution is for everyone to make it yy/mm/dd, this way the date falls into order numerically like this:

 

13/09/22

14/04/17

 

compared to:

 

04/17/14

09/22/13

 

or:

 

17/09/14

22/09/13

[Polar 30]

As has been stated, nothing is different except seasons and everything cyclonic is clockwise, the stars are different as well, southern cross as opposed to north star and everything points south not north and most use 24 hour time clock. I think that about covers it. The girls are pretty, at least those in Tahiti, etc.   :wub:

 

The correct way, month, date, year....sorry for those who do it different. :blink: :rolleyes:

[trevorbee 0]

Nobody mentioned it is possible to have two Christmases in the Southern hemisphere.

 

Here in New Zealand, many restaurants offer a mid winter Christmas meal in June as well as the traditional Christmas fare in December.

[Dave Morgan 68]

Living in the UK one thing threw me when I visited my cousin in South Africa. The sun travelled across the sky from right to left - the opposite of what I'm used to!

 

Clearly logical when you think of it but it did temporarily throw me when I prepared my sunbed to catch a few rays!

 

... should have worked on tanning your back instead! Would have saved you the confusion.

 

Seriously, that's one of those small pieces of understanding that's always been in the back of my mind, but until I read your post I hadn't visualised the sun being in the north at noon.

[anthony31 63]

And in oz some restaurants will do Christmas in July.

 

Really, the main reason we don't have Christmas in the middle of the year is because it is drop bear mating season then and we dare not go outdoors during that time.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,958]

Dave,

 

I was more concerned about not getting burnt with the power of a near-overhead sun!

 

Being interested in astronomy I was looking forward to seeing the night sky in SA. But when you've grown up in the northern hemisphere to then see Orion upside -down was shall we say - interesting. Many of the constellations we never see from the UK looked spectacular none more so that Scorpio.

 

 

The correct way, month, date, year....sorry for those who do it different

 

The US seems to be the only country that does that. Any particular reason?

 

"July 7" is grammatically dreadful whereas "the seventh day of July" shortened to 7th July is much easier on the ear.

 

Given Americans tend to state the month first followed by the day number why do you refer to your Independence day as "the fourth of July" when logically you should use "July 4"?

[Dave Morgan 68]

 

....The best solution is for everyone to make it yy/mm/dd...

 

... which pretty well matches the ISO standard of most significant first (year) and least significant last (second):

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

 

yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ssZ

 

2014-07-07T10:19:00Z

 

I use it because I'm a curmudgeonly old reactionary who is amused by the confusion caused by so many preferences.

 

D

[january 19]

The US seems to be the only country that does that. Any particular reason?

 

"July 7" is grammatically dreadful whereas "the seventh day of July" shortened to 7th July is much easier on the ear.

 

 

Ray- In Canada also, we tend to use "month" first - as in today "July 7". (Ask for the date and the verbal reply may be- "july7th")

My guess is that the custom derives from the North American agricultural heritage- where month had greater importance than day- such as- "grain harvesting is carried on in September and should be complete before the end of October". (Day was unimportant, except on Sunday everyone went to church!)

Actual "day" had little relevance- it was the season that was most important.

I think most Canadians still place more significance on month - ie mention December and everyone instantly thinks of Christmas.

 

And I suppose this topic leads to the concept of time zones- of which, Canada has 4 1/2 zones !!! (Newfoundland runs 1/2 hour ahead of Atlantic time.)

World wide time zones were first proposed in 1879 by Sanford Fleming of Canadian Pacific Railway fame. How in heck do you run a 3000 mile railway system without standardized time- on which the world agrees -even if we can't agree on how to write or speak the date!!!

january

[Tatave 57]

yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ssZ

 

2014-07-07T10:19:00Z 

 

Canada seems to be the only country to use three dating methods (dd.mm.yyyy, mm.dd.yyyy and yyyy.mm.dd). 

 

By the way, to the OP, As hot as Australia may be in Summer, it is quite cold right now, in the middle of winter. As I write this, the outside temperature is 7 degrees Celsius (44 Fahrenheit). However, most days are relatively warm (Upwards of 20 degrees Celsius). I've been down in Canberra during the winter before; where the temperature dropped as low as -6. And for Australia, those kinds of temperatures are GLACIAL. :smile:

[Ray Proudfoot 8,958]

January,

 

People over here often refer to the UK as the 51st state. Perhaps it should be Canada. I'll start running now! :wink:

 

Your points about agricultural relevance to months could also apply to the UK with our short summers. Like many things that differ between the US and the UK the reasons are probably lost in time.

 

Most large countries span multiple time zones like Russia and Australia. I suppose you treat them like airline schedules.

[Polar 30]

Probably dates back to earliest days of nation w/ the ties to England, and it stuck. Maybe too was a means to better identify the important date as opposed to any other day, eg. July 4th during the calendar year. Someone not referring to Independence Day for example, an appointment, would say July 4th, at least I do. Maybe I should refer the question to Ben Franklin. lol :blink:

[Paul K 1,334]

What I don't understand is why Americans say 'I could care less' when what they actually mean is 'I couldn't care less'. To say 'I could care less' implies that you actually do already care, to some degree.

[Guest JustanotherPilot]

As an Australian, you don't realise how insignificant we are on the world stage until you travel overseas, and how little other countries know about us and the size of Australia. Once, while holidaying in England my wife and I hired a car and drove from London to Glasgow - no big deal about 500 miles, did it comfortably in 8 hours. The locals were horrified that we drove such a 'long way'. Yet back Home I regularly drove from Brisbane to Melbourne in one hit, about 1000 miles in 15-18 hours. The English couldn't believe it. To drive from the  east (Sydney ) to west coast (Perth) by road is nearly 3000miles, we don't worry about distance, it's just accepted.

 

I guess we just don't sell ourselves properly to the rest of the world.

[Jimm 437]

I'm gonna have to side with Tom here, but back it up with some simple astrophysics:

 

There is no up or down in space so all of us are correct and wrong at the same time.  History, unfortunately, has dictated a lot for civilization as a whole.

[Dillon 2,197]

As an Australian, you don't realise how insignificant we are on the world stage until you travel overseas, and how little other countries know about us and the size of Australia. Once, while holidaying in England my wife and I hired a car and drove from London to Glasgow - no big deal about 500 miles, did it comfortably in 8 hours. The locals were horrified that we drove such a 'long way'. Yet back Home I regularly drove from Brisbane to Melbourne in one hit, about 1000 miles in 15-18 hours. The English couldn't believe it. To drive from the  east (Sydney ) to west coast (Perth) by road is nearly 3000miles, we don't worry about distance, it's just accepted.

 

I guess we just don't sell ourselves properly to the rest of the world.

 

How did people travel from Sydney to Perth before air travel? The distance is brutal by plane let alone driving. I'm doing allot of Down Under flying now that I got NZ fully covered. It's amazing Perth was even settled being so far away from the habitual section of southeast Aus. Darwin is even worse with nothing meaningful in between (Alice Springs is a small town). Most of Aus is undeveloped meaning a few gas cans are in order for city to city travel. Years ago I would have opted for sea travel to Sydney versus horse and buggy or horse in general, the outback is huge. Heck their using A330-200/300 between Sydney and Perth as the distance is so great and the volume of people that have to get back and forth... Wow is an understatement. If Aus was ever to get invaded years ago the Outback alone would get the invading army without a shot being fired.