k-Muggle: There's an embargo on the books which means they can't be released until 00:01am 16th July 2005 BST. This means the book will be released around 9AM in Australia.

The embargo is only until then so seeing as the US is behind us, they can still have a midnight release so technically, the UK gets the books 5 hours earlier. I think that's because they have to wait until it's the 16th to release them however if it's the 16th here then they could probably start selling them in the US at around 7PM when it's just gone midnight over here.