Prayer Times in Melbourne, Australia

The prayer day in Melbourne

Melbourne, Australia gets its own calculation here, run from the coordinates 37.81° S, 144.96° E rather than borrowed from a larger city nearby. A city an hour down the road will have times a few minutes apart from these, which is exactly why a country-wide timetable is a rough guide at best.

Suhoor and iftar in Melbourne

The fasting day here runs 4:36 am to 7:52 pm: suhoor closes at the first, iftar comes at the second. Today it works out to some 15 hours and 16 minutes. The full month is listed below if you want to see where the fast is heading.

The direction of prayer

The qibla from here runs west, a bearing of about 279°. That puts the Kaaba roughly 12,741 km — 7,917 miles — from here. Compass apps usually read magnetic north rather than true north, so allow a few degrees of local declination if you are setting a prayer mat precisely.

How much the times move

The yearly swing here is substantial. In June, Fajr in Melbourne can fall in the small hours with Isha holding off until late evening; in December the whole day from Fajr to Isha is over in a short span. Check the monthly timetable rather than assuming last season's times still hold.

Why Dhuhr lands where it does

Solar noon in Melbourne falls about 64 minutes after twelve o'clock. Hence Dhuhr at 1:04 pm, with the rest of the afternoon following along behind it. It is not an error — timezones are drawn for administrative convenience, not astronomical accuracy.

The shape of the day

Fajr is at 4:36 am — early, and in darkness. Sunrise at 6:16 am closes that window. Midday brings Dhuhr at 1:04 pm; Asr comes round at 5:53 pm. Maghrib comes with sunset at 7:52 pm, and Isha closes the day at 9:22 pm. Around 13 hours and 36 minutes of daylight, all told.

A note on the method used

The calculation used here is Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah. Where two calculations disagree it is nearly always Fajr or Isha: those depend on twilight, and twilight is a judgement call. Asr here follows the Hanafi reckoning, which places it noticeably later in the afternoon than the other schools would. Local practice wins over any website, this one included.

A few things worth knowing

This page rebuilds itself daily for Melbourne — the times are always the current ones.