System log date, after nightly reboot

On my RT68U I've set the Merlin "Enable Reboot Scheduler" for nightly reboots at 5:30am (timezone is set). It seems sensible to me to have that.

But just after the reboot, before it does the NTP sync but after the WAN connect, the system log date is always Aug 1 02:00am (what year??). Does the device have no RTC that keeps the real time?

Is this normal?

Typical log entry:

Aug 1 02:00:28 start_nat_rules: apply the nat_rules(/tmp/nat_rules_ppp0_eth0)!
Aug 1...

System log date, after nightly reboot