Brigadier Dianne Gallasch was a keenly interested bystander at Tuesday's Royal Military College, Duntroon mid-year graduation. A veteran of 29 years in the Australian Army, the former director of general support at Bungendore's Headquarters Joint Operations Command starts work as the college's first female commandant on Wednesday.
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Former commandant Brigadier David Luhrs, who was appointed in January 2011, stepped down on Tuesday night. His last official function was the graduation ball at which 67 freshly minted officers, seven of whom were female and another seven of whom are members of foreign armies, celebrated the end of 18 months of intensive training.
Chief of Army, Lieutenant-General David Morrison, whose memories of his own graduation from the now closed Portsea Military College in 1979 are still fresh, said the main emotion the former staff cadets would have felt was relief.
''Every officer remembers their day of commissioning and their first day in command of soldiers,'' he said. ''It is a real life experience and you have to feel it to know how special it is.''
Brigadier Gallasch comes to Duntroon, the Australian Army's oldest institution that even predates Canberra, at a time of controversy and change. It is less than four days since General Morrison fired a video broadside at sexism and misogyny in the service, telling soldiers if they had a problem serving with women they should leave.
Like General Morrison, Brigadier Gallasch is not a Duntroon graduate. She was one of the last officers to come out of the now-defunct Women's Royal Australian Army Corps officer cadet scheme. Female officer cadets did not train alongside their male counterparts until 1985.
Duntroon's student body put on a fine show despite the 5-degree temperature and a lingering fog across the parade ground.
The ''sword of honour'', a special distinction awarded for ''exemplary conduct and performance of duty'', was presented to Senior Under Officer Darryl Clark.
The Queen's Medal, for the highest aggregate marks in the first and second class, was presented to Under Officer Gerard Hinchcliffe.
General Morrison paid special tribute to Brigadier Luhrs' efforts at the college and told the graduates that while their officer training had ended, their ''lifelong learning journey'' had just begun.
