It’s a long wait for sunrise these days, but relief is at hand. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
Sunday is Liberation Day.
After six months of daylight saving or that misnomer summer time, the clocks go back to normal.
This morning, the sun rose at 7:18 am Canberra time. It’s been pitch black every morning for weeks when I get up.
I sit there having breakfast, and it’s still dark outside. It feels like the depths of winter already. Or I’m catching an early flight. Or setting off on a long road trip. Every day.
Having fun getting the kids up for school?
The first peeps of light appear not long before the garage opens and I head off to toil under the fluoros.
The morning walk has to be plotted under the streetlight or, like some I’ve seen bobbing along, negotiated with a head lamp. I’ve risked the river reserve walk only to almost stumble into a massive, muscled roo that could tear my insides out if he had a mind to.
It’s April, for God’s sake, and a week has almost gone already. But it’s legislated. Not until the first Sunday of April can the clocks go back, which happens to be the 6th this year.
All so some of you can have a bit more light after work to stare at from the dinner table. Oh, all right, go for a run. Sure.
Daylight saving was a wartime measure to save fuel. Well, the war’s been over for a while now, and all the research shows that the gains when it comes to power usage are negligible.
For all the power saved in the evenings, it’s chewed up in the dark of the morning. Any savings in lighting tend to be offset by increased heating and cooling.
Come Sunday, it will be the biannual adjustment in biorhythms, likened to jet lag, as we adapt to the new regime.
Of course, if you are not on a timetable, it doesn’t really matter. But most of us still have jobs, although some might still be in their jammies in the home office.
It’s a tyranny made worse by this continued manipulation in the shoulder seasons.
If we must have it, why not limit it to actual summer, where the extremes are less profound?
After a long winter, the spring light is a saviour until October, when we are plunged back into the morning darkness.
Now, as winter approaches, the tardy morning light is fleeting before the commute.
But some even argue to make it permanent, an idea that brings a shudder contemplating a Canberra July.
This year, we’re going to retrieve some of the light we have lost by midwintering in Queensland, which is more expensive than a light box but worth it.
It’s futile, I know. Canberrans love their extended evenings, but here’s the deal: keep it for the summer, but rewind it at least a month on either side. That’s more than fair, isn’t it?
