Could it be the right time?
When New Zealand “springs forward” into daylight saving this weekend, tourist town Te Anau will never go back. So what if Hawke’s Bay, one of the first to greet the sun, did the same? reports.
The brothers behind Napier’s iconic The Clock Shop on Dalton St — Marcus and Oscar Petersen — say time is a “relative concept”.
“We sell time essentially,” Marcus says, adding horology, the study and measurement of time, is one of the oldest crafts.
“It’s a measurement of essentially nothing — it’s a concept or illusion.
“Time is only relative to us.” New Zealand first introduced daylight saving time in 1927 but the modern era began in 1974/75 when a trial shunted time forward an hour and made it permanent.
Several countries around the world, especially near the Equator, don’t fall back or jump ahead.
The Petersen brothers took over the clock shop from their parents, who had been there for 15 years, a few months ago.
“[Our mum] picked up the trade of restoring old school clocks including grandfather clocks,” Marcus said.
Marcus said Te Anau’s new campaign “made sense” for the tourist town and could offer them a point of difference.
“Sure — ‘let’s go to the place where our clocks are wrong’.
“There’s nothing to stop you doing that.”
Then again, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, his brother Oscar added. Watch this space, perhaps.
The brothers regularly get requests from people to set their clocks or watches to different times. It’s common for people to live on their own time, Marcus said.
“We’ll be doing a battery replacement on a watch and when we tell them we’re setting the time, they’ll ask us to set it half an hour or an hour earlier.
“We’re all on our own time essentially but governed by the same time.”
Napier mayor Kirsten Wise said there may well be businesses in Hawke’s Bay that would welcome an extra hour of daylight, such as in hospitality.
“I can’t say I’ve heard of any thinking about it at the moment.
“I think we’re probably well ahead of the south on sunshine hours anyway, so it may not make a huge difference to us.
“It might be best to see how things tick over on Te Anau time before our region commits itself.”
She wondered how Napier residents would remember to check their smoke alarms without daylight saving.
Hastings mayor Sandra Hazlehurst will also be watching “with interest” what happens in Te Anau. “I would take my lead off our community in terms of whether it was something I would advocate or not.” While daylight saving is a bugbear for many early-rising dairy farmers, Federated Farmers Hawke’s Bay president Jim Galloway said he wouldn’t support ditching it.
“It would still be dark at 8am in the morning. Starting working at 7.30am in winter, it’s only just daylight and light enough to see on the farm. “If you moved that to 8.30am before you could start work, the day would be gone.”
He said while an extra hour was valuable to dairy farms, especially when still busy on the farm, he said daylight saving was helpful for sheep and beef farmers.
“Daylight saving on a sheep and beef farm is quite good as you need to get your stock work done early before it gets too hot.
“If we didn’t have it we’d have to be up earlier.
“If it is still dark in the morning, rural school children waiting for buses could also be at risk by not being visible to traffic.”
With any change, it takes a while to get used to, he said, likening it to working out the time when making overseas calls.
“It’s quite handy being able to just look it up on your phone though.”