Previously the receptionist at the front desk of the Mackenzie District Council in Fairlie, she merely had to walk up the stairs and take the second door on the right - the mayor's office.
Mrs Barlow (48), who is Mackenzie's first female mayor, beat two sitting councillors for the top job after John O'Neill decided not to seek re-election.
Several months after being handed the mayoral chains, the mother-of-four says she is starting to get her head around the position.
Down-to-earth, witty and engaging, she is passionate about the Mackenzie district and enthusiastic about its future.
Mrs Barlow was born in Wellington.
Her father was a pilot and the family had stints living at the Wigram and Ohakea air bases until she was 10, when they moved to Auckland.
After meeting her husband, Stephen, she travelled overseas with him before they came home and started a family.
They have four children, aged between 19 and 25.
They lived in various parts of the North Island before moving to the Mackenzie district 14 years ago, firstly to Lake Tekapo, where her husband worked at the Mt John Observatory, and then, after 18 months, to Fairlie.
While she returned to the North Island to visit family and friends, her heart was firmly entrenched in the Mackenzie district.
When the couple made their wills some years ago, she was very emphatic that she wanted to be buried in the Fairlie cemetery.
''I'd never had anywhere to call home prior to moving here. We decided when we came here, 'That's it, we're putting down roots.'
''My heart was here the very first day we drove up to the top of Mt Michael.
I saw Fairlie and I fell in love with it.''
Mrs Barlow started her receptionist job in 2003, while her husband, whom she described as her ''rock'', joined the council two and-a-half years ago.
He is its information technology manager.
While she had never been a receptionist before, she loved the job and the interaction with the public.
She also became interested in the council and began asking a lot of questions.
A few people encouraged her to stand for the council but she could not be a councillor and a receptionist, and she was not willing to give up a full-time job.
So she decided to stand for the mayoralty.
While not politically minded, she was community minded and wanted to see progress in the district.
Mrs Barlow admitted that, naively, she thought the mayoralty would not be much of a change from what she was doing - it was still public interaction.
Then she started on the campaign trail and that was a whole new learning curve.
''I was incredibly naive. I just thought I was going to put my name out there and people would vote.''
Her goals included better community consultation - ''I feel a lot of frustration arises because people don't understand or have all the information when council does something'' - and more feedback from the community to the council, so when a decision was made, the council could be ''fairly confident'' it had the public on board.
She also felt it was time to get a positive vision for the future and unite the
district, rather than having three separate towns.
Mrs Barlow was online, communicating with one of her daughters, when she got the call to say she had won the mayoralty.
Her husband was at the council, waiting to post the results on the council website, and she could not call him until all the other candidates had been notified.
''Everything went crazy'' for the next couple of days but it was ''lovely crazy''.
Then came the hard work.
Having the former receptionist move to the mayor's office was a notable change for the council staff, but she had felt ''incredibly well supported''.
The staff were one of the things she loved about working at the council.
''I'm not a mayor coming in from outside. I know the staff and I know you can trust them; I've been working among them for seven years.''
While there was much to learn and life had become very busy, Mrs Barlow was thriving on the challenge.
''It's been very busy but I'm loving it ... I love to be with people, hear what they have to say. I love to represent the district, I love meeting new people.''
She had to come to grips with the issues facing the district and one of those was environmental.
She attended the recent symposium in Twizel on the future of the Mackenzie, Omarama and Ohau basins.
It got some discussion going and she was confident the various stakeholders would be able to work together.
People who were willing to get together and talk things through stood a far better chance of achieving something, she said.
She was determined to do something about solid waste issues, saying she had learned from her days on the reception desk that the one thing that annoyed people the most was dealing with their rubbish.
Another issue that needed to be addressed was getting high-speed broadband in the area.
That was very important for the growth of the district, she said.
''If you have got access to the internet, you can run your business from almost anywhere. That means you can attract more people to live outside of the cities and in the smaller towns.''
The council had a very large area to administer, which included a lot of roading, which was very expensive, and a small ratepayer base.
There had been a ''fair amount'' of development in Twizel and Tekapo in recent years, although Fairlie did not have the same level of development.
Mrs Barlow admitted she was probably previously unaware how much status was attached to the role of mayor.
The respect that came with the position was ''incredibly humbling''.
''It's an absolute privilege. I'm absolutely blown away that I get to do it. You realise people are relying on you. I hope I live up to their expectations.''
While it would be ''lovely'' if the job could last longer than three years, she laughed that she had to ''reapply''.
''If I do a lousy job, I don't deserve to get in for another three years. I will give it my best.''
The Mackenzie
• The Mackenzie district was first settled by Europeans in the 1850s.
• The first elected representatives served on the Mount Cook electorate of the Canterbury Provincial Council in 1862.
• The forerunner of the Mackenzie County and District councils was the Mount Cook Roads Board, which was set up in 1864.
• In terms of population, the Mackenzie district is the third-smallest territorial authority in New Zealand, with a normally resident population count of 3801 on census night in 2006. Only Kaikoura district and the Chatham Islands have smaller residential populations.
• In contrast to its small population, the area of the district is large, comprising 745,562ha.
• Fairlie, Lake Tekapo and Twizel are the main towns and there are villages at Albury, Kimbell, Burkes Pass and Aoraki/Mount Cook.
