Travelling from Australia is unusual in as much that to get to most destinations a traveller must travel back in time. Travel west and the time travel is incremental usually in one hour blocks. Even Perth finds itself up to three hours in the past compared to the cities on the east coast. Travel east and not soon after New Zealand and suddenly a traveller loses an entire day as the international dateline is crossed.
On a previous holiday time stood still when I had three flights from three different countries and they all departed at 3pm on the same day. Don’t worry about jetlag, this sort of experience does your head in. Coming back to Australia from the east is no better as a 24hour flight takes up to 48hours by the clock. Coming back across the dateline and a n entire day just completely disappears.
In both examples I am left with the worrying philosophical dilemma “did I actually exist”. If I completely missed a day am I really one day younger. If I take off at 3pm arrive at 1pm on the same day did I have a “Groundhog Day” moment? Did I get a do-over? If a plane lands before it takes off did it ever fly at all?
I suggest this problem of the time-space continuum should be investigated more thoroughly, particularly as part of any carbon emissions debate. If the plane never really flew then it never really emitted any carbon.
On the upside, for business people with poor time management taking a flight to Perth every once in a while is a creative way of getting an extra few hours into your dairy to finish a task or two.
If travel was a classroom, then travelling west is like a teacher who gives you a few extra minutes to finish the page of maths, only to take the time away again (travelling back east) by keeping you in at lunchtime.
Travelling east is more like when the whole class does not understand the concept as so the teacher decides to start over from the very beginning – just before surprising the class with a surprise Saturday detention. Your weekend inexplicably disappears.
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