We've been in Canberra for nearly 5 years and have been posted back home to Adel as of the end of this year (YAY)! Do whatever you need to to get through the deployments, mine deployed frequently but for shorter periods so we were out of the deployment support loop, which was quite hard. However, if we were looking at 9 months (count 10 as they never get home when they first think they will plus there's always extra trips before they leave) there's no way I'd tough it out by myself! That's just not fun!