The enlistment date has been circled on the calendar for weeks.
Then suddenly it arrives…
Your partner leaves, starts recruit training and begins learning an entirely new way of working and living. Meanwhile, you gather your thoughts and go home.
That part can feel surprisingly strange.
The person joining Defence has instructors, timetables, other recruits and a very clear place they are expected to be.
The person at home may have very little idea what happens from here.
If that’s you, this is the bit worth knowing: the first few months are often a transition period for the whole household, but you and your partner will experience it very differently. You don’t need to understand every Defence process yet. You just need enough information to make these early months easier to navigate.
Enlistment is the beginning, not the end of the joining process
Getting through the ADF recruitment process can take so much time and attention that enlistment can feel like the finish line. From the family side, it is really the start of another stage.
After joining, most new ADF members undertake initial military training before moving into training for their particular job. Exactly what that looks like depends on their Service, entry pathway and role.
Army soldiers generally complete recruit training at Kapooka before moving into Initial Employment Training. ADF Careers currently describes full-time Army recruit training as approximately 13 weeks, followed by employment training that can take place at one or more locations around Australia.
Air Force aviators undertake Initial Military Training at 1 Recruit Training Unit at RAAF Base Wagga before moving into training for their trade or employment category. Air Force officers follow a different training pathway.
Navy members also move through initial training and then into training for their specific role, with the location and duration varying considerably between jobs.
Officer pathways, Reserve service, ADFA, direct-entry professional roles and specialist entry methods can look different again.
This is why comparing your partner’s training timeline with someone else’s can get confusing very quickly. Two people can join the ADF at around the same time and have completely different first years.
Recruit training can feel like a sudden communication drop
Before enlistment, you may have spoken throughout the day — then training starts.
Replies may become shorter. Calls may be less frequent. Your partner may be exhausted when you do speak. Sometimes they may not have much to tell you beyond what they ate, how tired they are and what they have to do tomorrow. That doesn’t automatically mean something is wrong.
Initial military training is structured around the member’s training program, not their usual home routine.
Access to phones, personal time and opportunities to call home can vary between Services, training establishments and stages of training. Your best source for the current arrangements is the information provided directly by your partner’s training establishment.
Try not to build your expectations around somebody else saying:
“My husband called every night.”
“My daughter had her phone all weekend.”
“We spoke every second day.”
Their experience may be completely accurate and still have nothing to do with yours.
Talk about communication before they leave
This conversation is worth having before enlistment day if you can, not because you need a strict calling schedule — you probably won’t be able to keep one anyway.
Talk instead about what each of you needs to know. Things like:
- If they only have five minutes, who calls whom?
- Is a quick text saying “I’m okay, just busy” enough?
- What household decisions can you make without checking first?
- What needs an actual conversation?
- How will you handle an urgent issue at home?
- Who else should have emergency contact details?
- Are there things you agree do not need to be raised during a rushed late-night phone call unless they genuinely need dealing with?
This becomes useful well beyond recruit training. Defence careers can include courses, exercises, field time, travel and other periods where communication doesn’t fit neatly around home life.
Working out your own communication habits early can save a lot of unnecessary worry.
You may hear less information than you expected
This can be one of the stranger adjustments for partners.
Your member may not know what happens next, or they might know something is likely but not yet have confirmed dates.
They may hear rumours about course dates, postings or training locations long before anything official appears.
Then the information changes — sometimes several times.
It can be frustrating when a decision affects your work, children, housing or family plans.
There is still an important distinction between:
“We’ve heard this might happen.”
and
“This has been confirmed.”
Learning to keep those two things separate will save you a lot of premature planning. You can still think ahead, just avoid making expensive or difficult-to-reverse decisions from information that hasn’t been confirmed yet.
Then comes IET
You will hear IET a lot.
It means Initial Employment Training.
Recruit training teaches the member how to operate within their Service.
IET teaches them how to do their actual job.
For some roles, this stage is relatively short, yet, for others, it can take many months, involve several courses or require training in more than one location. ADF Careers notes that Army and Air Force employment training can take members to one or more locations around Australia, and individual role pages list very different course lengths and training locations.
This can create an awkward period for families.
Recruit training has finished, but you are not necessarily at the point where the member has settled into their first unit or long-term posting.
There can be more training.
There can be waiting periods.
There can be course dates that move.
There may be another location before the first posting.
Try not to think of recruit graduation as the moment everything becomes settled.
Sometimes it does.
Sometimes it is simply the end of the first course.
Graduation can bring its own questions
Graduation dates matter to families, particularly when travel, accommodation, leave and children are involved.
Treat any early graduation date as provisional until your member has confirmed the arrangements they have been given.
If you need to book flights or accommodation early, flexible or refundable options can be worth the extra cost.
Army role information currently notes that successful completion of the Army Recruit Course includes a graduation parade where family and friends may be invited to attend. Arrangements can differ across Services and courses, so use the information supplied for your member’s training establishment rather than assuming every graduation works the same way.
And yes, it is perfectly normal to be excited about graduation and also mostly interested in knowing when you actually get your person back.
Some of the paperwork matters to you too
A lot of Defence administration belongs to the member. There are still a few areas where it is worth making sure your family information has been recorded correctly.
One of the big ones is Defence recognition of your relationship and family circumstances.
Some family services and benefits depend on how the member and their family are recorded within Defence systems.
Current Defence information for the Partner Employment Assistance Program, as one example, requires the partner to be recorded as the member’s resident family. That doesn’t mean you need to learn Defence administration yourself.
It does mean that “Defence knows I exist” and “our family information has been correctly recorded for a particular benefit or service” are not always the same thing.
If something later depends on family recognition, housing status or eligibility, check rather than assume.
Build your own household information before you need it
Recruit training is a useful time to discover whether one person in your household knows far too much information that nobody else has.
Do you know:
- where the insurance policies are?
- when the car registration is due?
- who the mortgage or rental contact is?
- where important documents are stored?
- the children’s Medicare details?
- how to access shared household bills?
- who to call if something breaks?
- which family members should be contacted during an emergency?
This isn’t specifically Defence admin. It is household admin that becomes much more noticeable when one person suddenly isn’t available.
You don’t need an enormous emergency folder, but you need enough shared information that the household can continue functioning when one of you is away.
Defence information does not always arrive through one neat channel
This can take some getting used to.
Some information comes directly to the member.
Some comes from their training establishment.
Some is available through Defence websites.
Some family information sits with Defence Member and Family Support.
Housing information may come from Defence Housing Australia.
Pay and conditions information can sit elsewhere again.
Then you have Facebook groups, partner chats, family members, other recruits and someone’s neighbour who apparently served twenty years ago and definitely knows how everything works.
It’s a lot. A useful rule is:
Use community experience to help you find the question. Use the current official source to check the answer.
That is especially important when the answer affects money, housing, travel, leave, family recognition, eligibility or a formal Defence process.
DMFS is worth knowing about now, not later
Defence Member and Family Support (DMFS) supports ADF families throughout the member’s service.
The Defence Member and Family Helpline is available 24 hours a day and can connect families with information and support around postings, relocation, deployment and time apart, childcare, education, partner employment, family needs and local services.
You do not need to be in crisis to contact them.
Defence also publishes a current Defence Member and Family Information Guide, which covers different stages of Defence life and includes information and experiences from Defence families.
Knowing these services exist before you need them is far easier than trying to find everything during a stressful week.
Your partner may not know the answers yet either
This deserves saying.
Your partner has joined Defence.
They have not instantly become an expert on Defence.
During those first few months, they are learning their own job, terminology, administration, ranks, routines, expectations and systems.
They may genuinely not know how a future posting works.
They might not know whether a family benefit applies.
They may not understand a pay condition yet.
And sometimes the person who answered their question in the room next door may not have given them the whole answer.
Give yourselves some room to learn, but don’t let “I don’t know” become the final answer when the decision matters.
Ask:
Who would know?
Where is that written?
Who can we contact?
Those three questions will take you a long way.
There are things partners often aren’t told early enough
You might not be told that your experience of the first few months can feel quite separate from your partner’s.
They may be busy every minute of the day. You may be checking your phone.
They may make close friends very quickly because they are living and training together. You may be home managing the same work, children, pets, bills and routines you had before.
They may feel like everything has changed. You may feel like almost nothing has changed, except they aren’t there.
That mismatch can feel odd, because neither person is necessarily having an easier time. You are simply living different versions of the same transition. It helps to name that before resentment starts doing the talking for you.
You don’t have to put your own life on hold
It is easy during the early stages to think:
“We’ll know after recruit training.”
Then:
“We’ll know after IET.”
Then:
“We’ll know once the posting comes through.”
Defence careers contain a lot of future dates. If you wait for every Defence variable to settle before making plans for yourself, you may wait a very long time.
Keep going to work.
See your friends.
Make weekend plans.
Keep the children in their activities.
Continue your study.
Work on your business.
Book things where you reasonably can.
Your partner’s training matters, and so does the life continuing at home.
What should you know by the end of these first few months?
Not everything. You don’t need to know every acronym or understand every Defence condition of service.
A much more useful starting point is knowing:
who your member belongs to and where they are training
roughly what stage of training comes after this one
how the two of you will communicate when contact is limited
where important household information lives
how to contact DMFS
which information needs an official source before you act on it
and whether Defence has the family details it needs for services that may apply later.
That is enough for now.
There will be postings, housing, removals, time apart, employment questions and plenty more to learn if they become part of your family’s Defence life.
You don’t need to solve those today. Get through the stage you’re actually in. The rest can wait until it becomes useful.
Information checked: September 2026.
About this information
Boots Back Home is an independent resource for Australian Defence families and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Australian Department of Defence, the Australian Defence Force, Defence Housing Australia or the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.
Defence policies, benefits, services and eligibility requirements can change and individual circumstances differ. Where a decision depends on an entitlement, condition of service, housing arrangement or Defence policy, check the current official information or contact the relevant Defence service before making financial or family decisions.
