One of the great spectacles of Canberra will be diminished this year - but still very loud.
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Because of coronavirus regulations, the graduation parade at the Australian Defence Force Academy has been cut back to a socially-distanced minimum.
Where normally 1000 cadets would march in elaborate routines, this Sunday will see a mere 300 keep their distance in a pared-down ceremony.
The guest list of around 2000 family members and friends has been cut to zero. They'll have to watch the live-stream (which isn't quite the same).
Dignitaries will be there, including the Governor-General and the Chief of the Defence Staff, but they won't be joined by proud parents.
But there will be the usual loud fly-pasts over the city on Sunday morning, the first one at 9.40am and the second at 10.20am.
"It will be loud," Commodore Peter Leavy said.
The fly-past will be by two F-35 fighters.
"It will be a good chance for the people of Canberra to see the latest RAAF jet," the man in charge of the Academy said.
The ceremony is the passing-out parade of trainee officers for the three services.
At its core this year will be a Canberra woman, barking the orders.
Midshipman Tiffany McCormack is the Academy Cadet Captain, the senior role among the cadets.
She joined the navy after schooling in Narrabundah College and Canberra Girls Grammar. She comes from a naval family - her father was a sub-mariner who retired from the service on Sunday, and her mother was in the naval reserve.
After she graduates, she becomes Sub Lieutenant Tiffany McCormack (pronounced: loo-tenant in the navy and lev-tenant in the army).
She then has a short spell at the Headquarters, Joint Operations Command between Queanbeyan and Bungendore before training as an "aviation warfare officer" based at HMAS Albatross near Nowra.
In that role, she will work in a three-person helicopter, alongside the pilot and the third person who she says does much of the winching and lifting.
Aviation warfare officers control individual operations in war, deciding tactics in the immediacy of battle. They do the planning and make decisions about when weapons are used in combat.
She's 21 and comes over with great self-assurance which does not overspill into arrogance. She is analytical.
She is politically astute and speaks Indonesian. Her degree is in Indonesian and political studies.
She is immersed in the military - her reading-matter is a novel about warfare and the other book on her bedside table is Call Sign, Chaos which the publishers describe as "a clear-eyed account of learning how to lead in a chaotic world, by General Jim Mattis, the former Secretary of Defense and one of the most formidable strategic thinkers of our time, and Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense and combat Marine."
On Sunday, Midshipman Tiffany McCormack will be at the high-profile centre of the ceremonial side of military life.
"I'm nervous - but I'm probably more excited," she said.
Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
