Daily Photo: Patchwork light across Dunedin

It was one of those evenings when the late afternoon clouds began to break, casting a patchwork of light and shadow across the hills above the city and thanks to daylight savings, there was a wee bit more time in the evening to enjoy it. I thought about this as the light changed across the hills above the city and recalled a story I had read about when New Zealand reintroduced daylight saving time back in November of 1974. It was introduced on a trial basis as a way to optimize the extra hours of evening sunlight although not everyone was thrilled, especially the dairy farmers.

In a small Northland farming community called Ararua, the locals were in fact furious. The extra late-afternoon sun disrupted the cow’s natural rhythm and made early morning starts even darker. So, rather than comply with the government’s shift in time, the town revolted by refusing to move their clocks forward and declared their own independent time zone. It also gave them the opportunity to put up road signs like: “Welcome to Ararua Time. Drive slowly, you’re an hour early anyway.”