When Warrnambool's Catherine Lourey decided it was time to move to the Northern Territory she thought that meant she would have to quit her job.
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But one thing the COVID-19 pandemic has shown employers is that staff don't always have to work in the office, nor even in the same town as their workplace.
So instead of arriving in Darwin with her partner and both of them having to look for work in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, Ms Lourey has been able to keep her Warrnambool job at Westvic Staffing Solutions and do it from the other side of the country.
Last week Miss Lourey and her partner arrived in Darwin for two weeks of hotel quarantine.
They will get out on October 21 - a week or so before NT has promised to open the borders to regional Victoria and remove the need to quarantine.
Miss Lourey said that without COVID, the option of keeping her accounting job and moving to the other side of the country probably wouldn't have been considered.
"It's probably one good thing that has come out of COVID," she said.
"We're very lucky."
Miss Lourey said the idea to move to the Northern Territory was always part of the couple's five-year plan, and the couple had even bought a house up there a few years ago.
But in June - two years into their five-year plan - the couple decided it was time to make the move.
In August she resigned from her job.
"With the relationships I've developed with the managers in the last few months I felt like I was going to disappoint them," she said.
"I was very grateful that Dean (Luciani) came up with this idea and made it work ... 99.5 per cent of my work is on the computer, so it was quite easy to just pack up and take everything with me."
Westvic CEO Dean Luciani said Miss Lourey was an important part of the business and had been making a big contribution for about five years.
"From my point of view it's a win-win. Good staff are the heart that makes any business beat," he said.
"If you can do the job just as effectively from a remote location - what's the difference between Timboon and Darwin.
"If we've learnt anything out of COVID, it's that change is constant. We're not going to be successful in the current environment if we use old thinking."
Mr Luciani said the pandemic had opened businesses to new thinking and new concepts.
He said being in the employment market, working remotely had also opened up new possibilities when it came to filling the region's skills shortages.
He said it could also work in reverse with new community members moving to the region while still working remotely in their Melbourne-based jobs.
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