Since the beginning of civilisation, humans have been transfixed by the concept of time. Indigenous Australians first tracked it through changes in the land and the stars in the sky, seeing time as a cyclical, flexible concept. The Babylonians and Egyptians measured it using sundials and lunar calendars to determine the best seasons for planting crops. About 5,000 years later, we are still talking about time here in Queensland.

The question of whether the sunshine state should put its clock forward during the warmer months has been the subject of heated debate since the 1970s. Queensland trialled daylight saving almost 35 years ago but the seemingly endless summer abruptly ended with a referendum in 1992. About 55 per cent of the state voted that they did not want longer days.

On the eve of daylight saving beginning in the southern states for another year, Queenslanders are still no closer to an answer about whether it would work for them. With more than 116,000 new residents moving to Queensland in 2022–23, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, is it time to reconsider daylight saving in the sunshine state?

University of Queensland's Thomas Sigler thinks so. An Australia-wide survey conducted by the Associate Professor in April found 66 per cent of Queenslanders were in favour of aligning with southern states. The number was higher in the south-east at about 70 per cent. Nationally, he found 80 per cent of people supported it. "Daylight saving is the single most petitioned topic in Queensland to the state parliament after car registration fees," Dr Sigler said.

He found most tradies and labourers did not want daylight saving, while high-income earners and white-collar workers were firmly for it. Queensland remains one of only three Australian states and territories that do not change their time zone annually, alongside Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

During daylight saving, other parts of the country turn their clocks forward an hour, causing the sun to set and rise later. A Queensland cabinet minute from 1990 reveals the concept was introduced in Australia during World War I to save energy and again in World War II in an attempt to conserve fuel. It was trialled in Queensland between 1971–72 and later in 1989–1992 before the failed referendum.

The lead-up to that referendum saw almost hysteric discourse about daylight saving, with suggestions drapes would fade and cows would not know when to be milked. The topic is divisive because of the huge differences in light and temperature between the south-east, north and west of the state.

Industries working the land do most in the morning and farmers say a later sunrise would make the days longer and hotter. The majority who support daylight saving live by the coast. They long for after-work swims and an end to the yearly nightmare imposed on communities straddling two time zones on the Coolangatta-Tweed Heads border.

Support for daylight saving drops outside the cities. "The farther west you are and the farther north you are, the less of a case there is for daylight saving," Dr Sigler said. Mount Isa is vertically aligned with Melbourne and has almost natural daylight saving. In early October this year, the sun will rise in Mount Isa around 6:24am, while on the Gold Coast, it is light from just after 5am.

In Burketown, 300 kilometres from Mount Isa, Mayor Ernie Camp said the heat in the north-west was already "relentless". "I think we should keep it where it is and if you want to get up an hour earlier don't be so childish as to turn the bloody clocks … just get up a bloody hour earlier — that would solve all the problems, wouldn't it?" he said, with typical north-west Queenslander directness. He fears the majority rule may disadvantage the near 200 residents who live in Burketown.

"You've got to take the concerns of all the state and one of the problems we have in Queensland is the populous overrules sometimes common sense," Cr Camp said.

Katter's Australia Party leader Robbie Katter's electorate covers more than 400,000km of north Queensland. He said those outside the region lacked "empathy" for Queenslanders up north when it came to daylight saving. "I was at a party at the Gold Coast once and a female, they started really hooking into me about daylight saving, saying, 'I want to go for a jog when I get home in the afternoon. I can't do that safely because it's dark'," he said. "I thought, 'That's terrific, well, tell that to the struggling mum out in Mount Isa who is trying to put our kids to bed at 8:30 at night and spend, you know, 45C days."

Mr Katter said daylight saving would reduce productivity in intensive industries such as mining. "A lot of people would say, 'Well, what's it matter? There are only a few people out there'," he said. "Well, we put up with a lot of adversity out in these areas as it is and to increase that adversity for the convenience of the cities, I don't think it's a very fair thing to do."

In Bungandarra, on a tropical fruit farm west of Yeppoon in central Queensland, Ian Groves agrees. "It's a serious problem for the kids out west when it's still 40 degrees at 9:30 at night … and they've got to get up in the dark to go to school," he said.

Dr Sigler said there were common misconceptions about daylight saving. "There are some totally valid reasons … but I've often heard people saying the sun will be up until nine or 10pm — it's just not true," he said.

Pro-group, Daylight Saving 4 Queensland, thinks a change would boost the economy, saying the state loses $4 billion every year without daylight saving. "No one under 52 years of age has ever voted on daylight saving in Queensland and no one under 34 years old has ever experienced it or tried it out," researcher Nick Lloyd said. He said he believed road safety would also be improved. "There'd be safer commutes for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists in the afternoon peak during the months of summer," he said.

Dr Sigler said those who have experienced daylight saving "tend to like it".

Andrew Tribe accommodates guests from both New South Wales and Queensland at his Tweed Heads caravan park. He spends more every year because of the time difference. "It's a bit of a nightmare for us," he said. "The guests from Queensland, a fair percentage of them don't realise that there's a time difference … we have to stay open an hour later, otherwise, people just turn up after we're shut."

Most of Mr Tribe's contractors live across the border. "Whenever we have a meeting … every time we have a discussion about a time, it always has to be proceeded with the old, 'Are we talking Queensland or NSW-time?' It's a 45 second conversation that you've got to have every day, multiple times a day," Mr Tribe said. Mr Tribe wants state governments to work together to find a solution.

"More than even countries in Europe, Australia's states are like separate countries. We can't sort of work together to have one uniform time zone on the east coast, it seems crazy. Let's just do it," he said.

Just 100 metres from the NSW border, members of Queensland's Coolangatta Bowls Club say one hour divides more than just the two states, but a community. The club's chairman Mark McLatchey says splitting Tweed Heads and Coolangatta by time zone has become a more emotive issue post-COVID after the state government restricted travel across the border at the height of the pandemic. "They're crossing the lines all the time so they see that as being the one community and it's only when we come along with daylight saving, people are actually taken aback," he said.

The club could not operate on NSW time, even if its members wanted it, due to its liquor licence. "Queensland members are obviously reasonably parochial in the terms of wanting to work to their time because, as they say, 'Queensland [hasn't] changed, it's NSW that's changing'," Mr McLatchey said. The club's members want the states to be on the same time. "I just wish that they would make the decision and make Australia whole, instead of Queensland worrying about the curtains and the cows," Jan Yule said.

Dr Sigler said a compromise could be splitting the state into two time zones. "There are 14 American states that are split and also NSW is split so Broken Hill is on a different time zone to Sydney," he said, suggesting a new state line at Bundaberg, diagonally to the NSW border. "We find very strong amounts of support for daylight saving from the Whitsundays and from Cairns, which are tourism-oriented economies."

Back in Burketown, Cr Camp is not convinced. "It does make me a bit critical, that we'd fool ourselves by winding the clocks … it's just like pulling a table cloth that is too short down one end of the table and not looking at the other end of the table," Cr Camp said.

In the lead up to the October state election, both major parties have ruled out changes to Queensland's time zone. The state government said daylight saving was not currently being considered, while the LNP said a trial was "not on the table". Leaving one thing for certain — the debate will continue to rage for another lap around the sun.