Although in parts of Western Australia 250VAC is used as standard, not sure why.
The story to that is that Australia wasn't always 240V. Into the 1950's the general situation was Victoria was on 230V, South Australia 210V, Western Australia 250V, and the rest on 240. Some country towns with their own generating plant had DC. It goes back to the colonial days before the country was federated. While the eastern states had standardised on 240V by the early 1960's, W.A was always the odd one out. In fact they did not want to become part of the commonwealth in 1901 and only did so with the promise of a railway line across the continent to link them to the eastern states. Incidentally, parts of W.A had 40 cycle mains as a result of purchasing South African plant.
Anyway, W.A did change to 240V in the mid 1980's. Hence the "240-250V" labelling on Australian made light bulbs. In actual fact, the nominal voltage was officially 254 and is why we used to be able to get 260V light bulbs which lasted forever in the eastern states.
[This message has been edited by aussie240 (edited 02-04-2007).]
