The federal election result was too close to call when counting wrapped up at 2am on Sunday morning, and the country is still on tenterhooks waiting for news of who will govern for the next 3 years.
However, the anxious and exhausted electorate will have to wait to find out who the next prime minister will be as counting is not set to restart in earnest until Tuesday.
In a statement the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) detailed what was set to happen on Sunday and Monday before voting counting could resume.
This included unpacking, sorting and returning more than one million postal and absentee votes to their home electorates.
"The AEC's focus today, Sunday, July 3, is on the declaration vote exchange," the statement said.
"The declaration vote exchange is where the large numbers of absent, interstate, postal and other declaration votes are reconciled, sorted and packaged ready for dispatch to the home division from Monday.
"Only once the declaration votes are received and processed in the home division can the counting of these votes begin."
The statement said Monday would see AEC staff "verifying more than one million postal votes already returned to the AEC so that they can be admitted to the count beginning on Tuesday".
On election night the AEC counted more than 11 million house of representative votes including the votes cast at polling places and pre-poll votes.
A first preference count of the Senate votes was also conducted for votes cast in polling places.
As of 11am Sunday, the AEC count had Labor sitting on 69 seats with another three seats looking like they would fall to the opposition, which would leave them with 72.
The Liberal National coalition 64 seats with another possible two likely to go with the government.
It leaves both parties short of the 76 seat majority needed to government in their own right.
This means Australia could be headed for another hung Parliament with cross bench MPs needed to allow either party to government the country.
AEC spokesman, Phil Diak, told the ABC it typically took about a month to fully complete all the counting for the house of representatives and the senate.
"The AEC won't declare seats until there's a mathematical impossibility of the leader being overtaken, as it were, in any seat," he said.
"So that's often a lot later than when victory is claimed or a seat is conceded."
