Grub, I lived in Darwin for years, but that was a long time ago.

I have a really dear friend who was an army wife who I worked with for a couple years, still stay in touch all these years later, but since then we have rarely been close enough to base to really be socialising a lot with defence people. In DH's last posting I really needed some help and support from that direction but the social things were always on days when I was working, and there was *no* deployment support until I provided very specific feedback and DCO (which had been critically understaffed) got a new social worker, they finally set up functions every few months (that was Canberra, for any of you ladies there) just before we left. FWIW I think our little family unit breaks probably every single stereotype there is about defence families.

The whole rank structure is a farce anyway. In some musterings you get promoted every few years just by doing the right courses, in other musterings you basically have to wait for someone to die (cos they ain't retiring) and then you're only promoted by merit. Highly unfair when you're excluded from the retention bonuses due to the system's mismanagement of career progression. Plus they have complete ****s in management positions while excellent staff with excellent leadership skills don't hang around that long because they can't justify the sort of decisions that are routinely made.