A wrong date matters on the day, so nothing here is quietly edited. Each entry says what the site said before, what it says now, and how the error surfaced — that last part being the one worth reading.
9 entries. This log was not empty on the day the site launched, which is deliberate: the errors were real and they were found by the checks described in the methodology.
Canberra’s two Anzac Day 2027 holidays were named the wrong way round
· /public-holidays/act/
It said: This page had Sunday 25 April 2027 as Anzac Day and Monday 26 April as an additional public holiday beside it — the New South Wales arrangement, which is what an earlier correction on this page had concluded from the ACT Government’s published list. Both dates were right and both were public holidays, so nobody would have booked the wrong day off. The reasons attached to them were the wrong way round.
It says now: Monday 26 April 2027 is Anzac Day, and Sunday 25 April is the additional day. Section 3(1)(a)(viii) sets Anzac Day on “25 April or, if that day falls on a Sunday, the following Monday” — and 2027 falls on a Sunday, so the holiday itself moves to the Monday. Instrument NI2026-387 then declares the Sunday an extra day beside it. The ACT is the mirror image of NSW on the same two dates, and it swaps sides between years: in 2026 the 25th is a Saturday, which the section does not move, so there the Saturday is Anzac Day and the declared extra is the Monday.
How it was caught: By finding the declarations themselves on the ACT Legislation Register, under the Holidays Act’s “Regulations & instruments” tab — which is where they had been all along, while this site’s open-questions list said they could not be located. Reading them also turned up something better: the Territory had originally gazetted a SWAP for 2026. NI2025-650, notified on 1 December 2025, declared Monday 27 April a holiday and used section 3(2) to declare Saturday 25 April not one. NI2026-154 revoked that on 25 March 2026, three and a half weeks before the day, which handed the Saturday back. Any table copied from the December gazette and never re-read is wrong today.
Twenty pages could not tell you the day had changed
· The school-holiday and long-weekend pages
It said: This site answers as of today, and on a static site that means the answer is only as fresh as the last build. The public-holiday pages carried a small script that re-checks the clock in your browser and puts a stale page right. The eight school-holiday pages and the twelve long-weekend pages did not, and they had never had one — so a build a day or two old would have told a parent that schools were still in Term 3 on the afternoon term ended, in the largest type on the page, with nothing to correct it.
It says now: All twenty carry one. The verdict, the date, the countdown, the next-break card and the facts beside it are corrected together, so the page cannot end up half-right — and it says at the bottom when a correction has happened rather than quietly disagreeing with its own build date.
How it was caught: By asking which pages could go wrong over TIME rather than whether each page was internally consistent — the question none of the existing build checks had been asked. Verified by building the site with the clock wound back a week and again wound forward past the end of term, then loading the result: the verdict flips from Yes to No and every figure moves with it. There is now a check that fails the build if a page prints a computed date with no way to correct itself.
The Perth calendar said it ran on Sydney time
· Every .ics calendar feed
It said: All sixteen feeds declared Sydney as their timezone, because the line was written once and never varied. A Western Australian subscriber’s calendar announced itself as eastern — two hours out, three in summer, on a state that does not observe daylight saving at all. Separately, the feeds that carry a part-day holiday named a timezone without ever defining it, which Apple and Google resolve on their own but stricter apps do not: Queensland’s 6pm Christmas Eve could have arrived at the wrong hour.
It says now: Every feed names its own zone, and any feed using one now carries its full definition, including when South Australia’s clocks move. Long lines are also folded by byte rather than by character, which the calendar standard asks for and which the em dashes in these descriptions had been quietly breaking.
How it was caught: By measuring the published files instead of trusting the tests. The tests checked that folding happened and that the timezone label was the right string — neither asked whether the result was within the limit, or whether anything defined the zone being named.
The ACT does get a second Anzac Day holiday
· /public-holidays/act/
It said: This page said the ACT moves Anzac Day to the Monday only when 25 April falls on a Sunday, and adds nothing when it falls on a Saturday. An FAQ went further and said Canberra works Monday 27 April 2026 while Sydney has a public holiday.
It says now: The ACT observes BOTH days in both 2026 and 2027 — Saturday 25 and Monday 27 April, then Sunday 25 and Monday 26 April. It behaves like New South Wales and Western Australia, not like Queensland. The extra day comes from a declaration under s3(1)(b) of the Holidays Act 1958 rather than from s3(1)(a)(viii), which is the paragraph that names Anzac Day.
How it was caught: By finally reaching the ACT Government’s own published list. Section 3(1)(a)(viii), read on its own, really does say “25 April or, if that day falls on a Sunday, the following Monday”. The Act was necessary and not sufficient. Every jurisdiction page now cites the Act AND the administering agency’s published schedule, in that order.
The two withdrawn trading citations now have real answers
· /public-holidays/act/ and /public-holidays/nt/
It said: Earlier the same day, both pages were changed to say we had not established what regulates shop trading in the ACT or the Northern Territory, after two Act names we could not confirm were removed. That was the honest state at the time and it was still an absence.
It says now: Both are answered, and the answer is the same in each: nothing restricts shop trading. The ACT repealed its Trading Hours Act 1996 outright, by the Trading Hours (Repeal) Act 1997, on 29 May 1997 and never replaced it. The Northern Territory has no such Act at all — its complete alphabetical list of 383 Acts in force carries no Trading Hours, Shop Trading or Retail Trading Act of any kind.
How it was caught: By going back to the registers with better handles. The ACT’s Act really did exist — it was A1962-19, not the number that had been guessed — and following its repeal chain gave the answer. The Territory’s was a negative finding, which is only worth publishing because it was checked against the whole statute book rather than assumed from silence.
Two shop-trading Acts cited that we had not opened
· /public-holidays/act/ and /public-holidays/nt/
It said: The ACT page named a “Trading Hours Act 1962” as the source of its shop trading rules, and the Northern Territory page named the Public Holidays Act 1981 — an Act that says nothing about shops at all.
It says now: Neither page names an Act. Both say plainly that we have not established what regulates shop trading there, or whether anything does, and point readers elsewhere in the meantime.
How it was caught: While reading the other five trading Acts. The ACT citation could not be confirmed on the legislation register and the NT one was simply the wrong Act. The underlying cause was worse than the symptom: a build check REQUIRED every jurisdiction to name a trading Act, including the ones marked unverified, which quietly pushed toward inventing a name. The check now allows an unverified section to cite nothing.
NSW shops must close all day on Anzac Day, not until 1pm
· /public-holidays/nsw/
It said: The design this site was built from carried the widely repeated rule that NSW shops may open after 1pm on Anzac Day. It was corrected before the page was ever published, but it is logged because the claim is still everywhere else.
It says now: Section 4 of the Retail Trading Act 2008 reads “at all times on Anzac Day”. The Retail Trading Amendment (Anzac Day Trading Hours) Act 2024 made that change, and Schedule 2 Part 6 clause 12 removed the leftover exemption that had carried over from the Shops and Industries Act 1962. The 1pm rule is still live in Victoria, which is probably why it persists.
How it was caught: By reading the section rather than a summary of it.
A colour that could not carry text was carrying text
· Every page
It said: The approved design used the site’s cyan accent for the small uppercase line above each heading and for the countdown pill. Measured against the page background it came to 4.28:1 and 3.96:1 — below the 4.5:1 minimum for text.
It says now: Cyan takes three steps: a graphic-only tone, a darker text-safe tone, and a pale tint. Every colour pair on the site is measured by a script that runs in the build, and the build fails if the graphic-only tone is ever used for text.
How it was caught: By measuring the palette before committing it, rather than after someone complained.
A stale page could say “Yes” and “Shops open” about the same day
· The public-holiday pages, the homepage and the social cards
It said: The browser correction on the public-holiday pages rewrote the headline, the date and the countdown when a build had gone stale — and nothing else. Wound forward to Christmas Day, the NSW page corrected itself to “Yes — today is a public holiday” while the panel beside it still read “Shops open today? Yes”. Christmas Day is a restricted trading day. Past the last gazetted date, the next-holiday card kept counting down to a holiday that had already been. The homepage answered for New South Wales alone, so a reader in Perth landed on the wrong state. And the social card drawn for each page carried one day’s verdict, so a link shared on a holiday could arrive saying “No”.
It says now: The correction recomputes every element that depends on the date with the same code the build used — the facts panel, the year strip and both tables included — and shows the “not yet gazetted” message rather than a stale countdown when the dates run out. The homepage answers for every state and territory, each on its own clock. Social cards carry the page’s title, which does not change with the day.
How it was caught: By an external review that loaded the built site with a mocked clock on real dates — Christmas Day, a Perth midnight, the day after the last verified date — rather than by reading the code, which had looked complete.
Found something wrong?
Tell us and it gets fixed and logged. Every page names the Act it was checked against and the date it was checked, which should make an error easy to point at — start from contact. Things we already know are unverified are listed on the methodology page, generated from the data rather than kept by hand.