From the Arabian Gulf to aged care: Katie Schonrock’s life of service 

Katie Schonrock joined the Royal Australian Navy the day before September 11, 2001. She woke up in recruit school to news that would reshape the world – and her career – in ways she couldn’t yet imagine. 

“We thought they were just geeing us up,” she recalls. “And then it was like, oh no, it’s actually real.” 

What followed was 13 years of full-time service, and a life lived at a pace most people only read about. 

Sailing into history 

Based primarily in Western Australia, Katie served aboard HMAS Arunta, HMAS Westralia, and HMAS Toowoomba – the ship where some of her most vivid memories were made. As a Communication Information Systems specialist – POCIS in Navy shorthand – her world was one of radios, satellite systems, and the age-old craft of morse code. It was technical, precise work, requiring both deep knowledge and sharp situational awareness. 

Deployed to the Arabian Gulf for six months, Katie and her crewmates patrolled Iraqi oil platforms during the Iraq and Afghan campaigns simultaneously. The region was volatile, the stakes real. 

On a separate posting aboard HMAS Westralia – a 40,000 tonne fuel tanker – she weathered two typhoons in quick succession, one of them while at anchor in Tokyo Bay, where an 80,000 tonne cargo vessel came drifting dangerously close in the night.  

“You could see the ship bending through the waves,” she says.  

“It was pretty horrific. We had to start our engines very fast to move out of the way.” 

She also patrolled the waters near Christmas Island as part of border protection operations – another chapter in a career marked by responsibility, pressure, and purpose. 

Teaching herself, then teaching others 

One of the defining turns in Katie’s Navy career came not in combat, but in a communications centre nobody knew how to operate. When HMAS Toowoomba was commissioned, the system had no formal training course. So Katie sat down and taught herself, working through the documentation until she understood it well enough to rewrite it. 

The Navy’s Sea Training Group took notice.  

She was soon standing up as an instructor, shaping others to do what she’d worked out on her own. By the time she was promoted to Petty Officer and returned to Toowoomba for a second posting, teaching had become as natural to her as any other form of service. 

It’s a thread that runs straight through to her work today. Now a Learning and Development Officer at Dovida – having previously worked as a scheduler – Katie still teaches in Wollongong, where the office delivers training in-house. 

“I really enjoy the teaching aspect,” she says. “That’s why I transitioned into the learning and development role here.” 

Calm in the eye of the storm 

It’s little wonder a career shaped in such conditions would mould someone who doesn’t rattle easily. 

In the Navy, Katie was trained for high-stakes problem solving – deliberately broken systems, changing threats, missions that required fast thinking and steady hands. When something went wrong, the response wasn’t panic. It was process. Stand back, find the workaround, keep moving. 

She brings that same steadiness to aged care. 

“When people here get a bit overstressed, I just have to remind them – we’re not in a war zone,” she says. “We just need to find the problem, find an answer, and step back and look at it a different way.” 

It’s a perspective shaped by real experience. In a sector that deals daily with complexity, urgency, and deeply human situations, that kind of quiet resilience matters. 

The values that carry across 

Katie is honest that the two worlds – naval service and aged care – aren’t an obvious match on paper. But dig a little deeper and the common ground becomes clear. 

Integrity. Loyalty. A commitment to showing up for people who need you. An instinct to problem-solve rather than freeze. A willingness to take on roles that others haven’t mapped out yet. 

At Dovida, those aren’t just nice-sounding values – they’re the qualities that make a real difference in the lives of the older Australians the organisation supports every day.  

Katie found her way into care through scheduling, drawn by the same puzzle-solving instinct that once had her decoding Navy operating systems on her own. Now she helps shape the people who go out and deliver that care directly. 

Still marching, still serving 

This ANZAC Day, Katie will march through Wollongong for the first time under the banner of the Women’s Veterans Network Australia – a group she joined last year, and one that means a lot to her. 

“A lot of RSLs, unfortunately, don’t recognise female veterans as much as they should,” she says.  

“So it’s just women meeting up, supporting each other.” 

She carries five medals, earned across more than two decades of service. An Active Service Medal with two clasps – Iraq Campaign and International Coalition Against Terror. An Operational Service Medal for Border Protection. A Long Service Medal. And the Australian Defence Medal. 

She wears them over her heart. As she’ll be quick to tell you, that’s exactly where they belong. 

This year, she’s also helping a Dovida colleague – a former RAF member – navigate the paperwork to claim a service medal she should have received decades ago.  

It’s that sense of service that perfectly encapsulates Katie and the values that define her.