For most, the first week of a new job involves learning the ropes and getting to know everyone in the office.
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But in her first week as commanding officer of HMAS Albatross, Robyn Phillips was thrown into the middle of a crisis.
Or, as she describes it: "a baptism of fire".
"Within a week of me taking command, the bushfires started threatening our area," Captain Phillips said.
"You get this little brief handover that doesn't quite go through absolutely everything you need to know to do your job.
"You get told some key essentials and then everyone runs away and goes on leave."
As Capt Phillips had removalists at her house in Canberra trying to pack up, she was taking calls about the Tianjara fire and how it might spread.
"I knew about six people and I'm getting phone calls from people I don't know, having to call people I don't know and trying to talk about different areas here in the Shoalhaven that I may not be that familiar with," she said.
"You expect to at least have time to get to know everyone and understand roughly what they do before you're thrown into chaos."
In her first week, she enacted her emergency powers and ordered all non-essential personnel off the base.
Thankfully, the efforts of firefighters, HMAS Albatross staff and the weather saved the base from any serious damage.
After December, her job began to settle down.
"I don't know if I know what a normal day is, but then I don't think this job has a normal day.
"I get to spend my time doing mundane things like signing off on paperwork through to talking to people and finding out about their amazing, great idea about how we can do something better."
In her job as commanding officer of a navy base, she delivers good news and bad news and has a lot of meetings.
"And I get to do other amazing things, basically, I do everything.
"Not that no one else does anything but the little things you get to do are so weird and wonderful, that there are no two days alike.
"It's never boring.
"You come to work with a little to-do list going, 'I've got these three things I want to do today', and invariably when you go home at night, they probably haven't been done but you've done all this other really cool stuff.
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As the new CO she has no dramatic goals for the job, but wants to leave the base in a better place.
"It's like you take over a rental property and you're just determined to hand it back cleaner than you got it.
"I would like to make sure the base doesn't burn down, that everyone stays safe."
For Capt Phillips, the job at HMAS Albatross came as a bit of a surprise. She didn't have a strong background in aviation and had initially put her hand up for the second-in-command position at HMAS Creswell.
"What ended up happening was someone quite high up coming to knock on my door 18 months ago, saying 'How would you feel about coming to Albatross?", which is a promotion instead of a job at same level.
"It didn't take me three seconds to say yes."
In her 30-year naval career she's had 17 location changes and this isn't the first time Phillips has worked at Albatross. She's had two postings at the base in 2004/5 and 2010 and her husband had worked on helicopters.
"Between the two of us we've nearly always had a home in the Shoalhaven region for 20 years.
"I've had a couple of postings here already and I've always felt this is like my home."
She started in the navy on the "ship side" of things and learnt how to be an officer of the watch before becoming a weather forecaster.
"I got seduced by the weather and fluffy clouds and thunderstorms and lightning and really cool stuff.
"I've progressed as a weather forecaster from actually doing the shift work and preparing the weather forecast, through to running a weather centre, through to being head of category.
"Now, while this isn't a weather related position, I get to come back to where that career kind of started."