It really is quite simple. Much easier to follow than the US-version where you have 60 seconds to a min, 60 mins to an hour, 24 hours to a day etc. But we don't let you know about it until you have been here a few days, and after a few of our local beers have been consumed.

Most overseas visitors from countries that still use the old imperial time system think they are just suffering jet-lag. But the reality is that they are not used to the operation of metric time.

Many countries feel the cost to convert all those old time pieces (clocks, watches, sun dials etc) to metric time would be excessive and better spent on solving world hunger or something like that. But here in Australia we took the plunge a few metric years ago.

Our next forray into change is scheduled for next year. To conform with the driving habbits of the majority of the world, we plan to change from driving on the left side of the road, to driving on the right side of the road. To streamline the change over, a trial period will be undertaken, commencing 1st April 2003. For this 12-month tial, trucks and busses will drive on the right and cars, motorcycles etc will continue to drive on the left. If the trial is deemed successful, all vehicles will transition on 1st April 2004. Minivans and pickups can decide to change anywhere in between, but may only transition once.

[This message has been edited by NM (edited 10-13-2002).]