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This article is from the soc.culture.australian FAQ, by Stephen Wales with numerous contributions by others.

9.7 Miscellaneous

For anyone chasing facts and figures about Australia I would recommend
The Book Of Australia Almanac, "The essential information book on
everything Australian". (524 pages) My copy is the 1991-92 Ed. which
cost me $2 at a sale in Melbourne, so I assume that there is a later
edition out now. Published by Hodder & Stoughton, 10-16 South St,
Rydalmere, NSW, 2116 [JN]

* Relative sizes of countries. Before the breakup of the USSR, the
order was: USSR (by far the biggest, more than twice the size of any
other country), then Canada, China, USA (inc. Alaska), Brazil and
Australia, making Australia number 6 in area. That Brazil was slightly
bigger than Oz was a bit of a surprise to me. I haven't seen the
stats for Russia, but given that in round figures it was something
like 22 for the USSR to 9 for Canada, the order seems unlikely to have
changed. [JH]

* Time Zones. Australia has three basic time zones; Eastern Central
Time (EST) (NSW, Vic, Qld, Tas) GMT+10, Central (SA, NT) GMT+9 1/2,
and the west coast GMT+8. NSW, SA, Vic, Tas, ACT put their clocks
forward an hour for "Daylight Savings" over the summer. (WA, Qld, and
the NT do not. [SW] Queensland had a referendum for Daylight Saving
in 1990 after a trial summer the year before. Due largely to the
country vote, the referendum failed by something like 53%/47%.)

Continue to:

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