Sydney to Auckland
The clock moves whether or not you are ready for it. This works out by how much, and what a bedtime walked an hour a night would look like on the way there or once you arrive.
Auckland runs 3 hours ahead of Sydney. To arrive already keeping Auckland hours, your bedtime has to move 3 hours earlier — from 10:00 pm to 7:00 pm, on your own clock at home. That is 3 nights, so the table below starts 3 nights before you fly.
| Night | Bed | Up | Moved | Sunset there on this clock | Sunrise there on this clock |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Night 1 | 9:00 pm | 5:30 am | −1h | 4:19 pm | 4:07 am |
| Night 2 | 8:00 pm | 4:30 am | −2h | 4:20 pm | 4:05 am |
| Night 3 | 7:00 pm | 3:30 am | −3h | 4:20 pm | 4:04 am |
The gap
Auckland runs 2 hours ahead of Sydney for most of the year. Both ends put their clocks forward for their summer and back for their winter, but not on the same dates, so in the days between the two changes the gap is an hour different. The planner above works from the difference on the date in its field, so for a trip in those days its figure is the one that applies.
What that asks of a bedtime
Taking the shorter way round the dial, the move is 2 hours earlier. At the planner's usual step of an hour a night, that is 2 nights of shifting, either before you fly or after you land.
This is clock arithmetic and nothing else. It does not know how you sleep on aeroplanes, it makes no claim about how quickly anybody adjusts, and an hour a night is a step size rather than a finding. Shorten the step in the planner if a smaller one suits you.
Sydney to Auckland through the year
Sydney to Auckland is two hours forward for almost the whole year. New Zealand puts its clocks forward on the last Sunday of September and New South Wales on the first Sunday of October, so for the week between them the gap is three hours. Both go back on the first Sunday of April, New Zealand two hours before New South Wales, and for those two hours the gap is one.
By the sun Auckland is about an hour and a half ahead of Sydney, since it lies 23.5 degrees further east. The two cities are about 2,160 km apart on the great circle, the shortest of the routes with a page like this one.
Going east, the move is earlier. A 10:00 pm bedtime in Sydney is midnight in Auckland, and at an hour a night that is two nights of shifting, or three in the last week of September. Before you fly, bedtime comes forward to 9:00 pm and then 8:00 pm on Sydney's clock. After you land, the plan starts from midnight local time and comes back to 11:00 pm and then 10:00 pm.
The calendar date differs only between 10:00 pm and midnight in Sydney, when Auckland has already moved on to the next day. Auckland's midsummer sunset, 8:43 pm on New Year's Day, is 6:43 pm in Sydney.
Auckland sits about five degrees west of the meridian its winter clock is set by, so in winter its sun runs about twenty minutes behind the clock. Its earliest sunrise, 5:55 am in early December, is 3:55 am in Sydney, and its latest, 7:37 am on 4 April in 2026, the last day before the clocks go back, is 5:37 am in Sydney. On the return, the move is two hours later, over two nights.
Going back
For the return leg, or for anywhere else, the planner takes any pair of cities.
Once you are there
With the clocks settled, the ordinary question comes back: what time to go to bed for the alarm you have set. That is the wake-time pages, which count in cycles rather than in zones.