Canberra's Captain Alison Mountain thought she had the best job in the Army Reserve when she played flute and piccolo with the Band of the Royal Military College, Duntroon.
That was until she was appointed the Army Reserve's first archaeologist.
But rather than unearthing dinosaur bones or Roman ruins, she is looking to locate and identify missing Australian service personnel lost in conflicts around the world, work she describes as "incredibly meaningful".
"The thing that most excites me about the role is that I will get to be part of giving soldiers back their names," she said.
"They died for our country and they're still missing, more than 100 years on in some cases. And we get to provide that respect to the soldiers, by giving them back their name, but also closure to their families.
"And I'm just so thrilled to be a part of it."
Born and bred in Canberra and now living in Macquarie, Captain Mountain, 31, grew up on a property near Queanbeyan and attended Canberra Girls Grammar School.
"I never ever thought that A: I would join the army and B: I would be working as an archaeologist," she said.
"I think there's just so many interesting jobs in army and women can totally be a part of that. And I do hope I inspire some young women to think more broadly about their career."
At the Australian National University, she completed a bachelor of science majoring in biological anthropology and a bachelor of arts majoring in archaeology.
She joined the ADF in 2016 as a part-time musician with the Band of the Royal Military College - Duntroon, playing the flute and piccolo.
"I was studying at uni at the time and I thought that getting paid to play music was a pretty cool thing," Captain Mountain told Defence Media's Flight Lieutenant Marina Power.
A singer from the band who was leaving mentioned, during a farewell speech, that she was heading off to do archaeology with the army.
"That was the first I heard that army was engaged in archaeology and because of my interest in that subject matter, I was very keen to find out more and get involved," she said.
Captain Mountain started working with the Unrecovered War Casualties - Army Unit as a desktop case investigator in 2018, while maintaining her primary role in the band.
Finishing up as a musician and commissioning in May this year, Captain Mountain took up the first-ever part-time role of an appointed archaeologist, site coordinator while also completing her masters of archaeological and evolutionary science part time at the ANU.
She works with case officers to investigate sites of interest, excavating and recording findings
"The point of the unit is to find, recover and identify missing Australian service personnel from conflict," she said.
"My role as an archaeologist with the unit is to help physically do the digging. The whole process involves a lot of historical background research and there's case investigators who do that. And now that , I'm in this position in the future the archaeologist will help with that, even before we get into the field.
"But when we're in the field, it's my job I guess to identify where specifically on the ground we're going to dig and specifically how we're going to do it."
Captain Mountain works full time as a public servant with the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.
"I am very grateful to my employer; they are extremely supportive of my Army Reserve work," she said.
Her "most proud" moment so far has been contributing to the research which helped a team - led by not-for-profit Silentworld Foundation and deep-sea survey specialists Fugro - to find the Japanese vessel SS Montevideo Maru in the South China Sea last year.
"It was an extraordinarily significant find. She was located at a depth of more than 4km, which is deeper than the Titanic," she told Flight Lieutenant Power.
"All our research indicated that at the time of sinking, she was carrying approximately 1060 prisoners of war, including 850 Australian service members, and around 210 civilians from different nations."
Next on the agenda is a project in France, where more than 17,000 Australian engaged in the fighting on the Western Front during the First World War remain missing in action.
Recently returned from a research trip to France, Captain Mountain knows how lucky she is to do such significant work.
"When I left the band, it was really funny. In his speech, the boss of the band said, 'So you're leaving the best job in army to go to the best job in army'.
"And it's so true."
