Vetting in Victoria

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Being a vet student (hoorah and at last!), work experience is always interesting and fun, but i can honestly say that my 3 weeks in Rochester (near Echuca, see above) were the best i have ever had on placement. As friend at college Jenny says, who is lifelong friends with Merryn, the vet that i stayed with, Rochester Veterinary Clinic has probably spoiled all English placements for me! There is no endless tea and coffee making, moping floors or fetching and carrying. The entire team are the loveliest people and are constantly and actively making sure that i got to go out and see the most interesting cases and got involved as much as possible.

I arrived from Syndey on the overnight train. I spent the Saturday after the jillaroo school with Kirke and Liz, meandering around Darling Harbour and Paddy's Market, before a rather difficult farewell at the station as they went off to watch the Mardi Gras parade. The train was only about half full so there was plenty of space to stretch out across the seats but i still didnt get that much sleep and it was fairly uncomfortable. Nevertheless i managed to change trains in Melbourne and met Merryn at the station in Rochester. My first day was a bit manic as i met most of her family, who had come up for lunch and to see a house she was considering buying. there was a lot of handshaking and new names, some of which i failed to retain, but they were all lovely, especially Merryn's two nieces, Indiya, 2 and Shyanna, 7 months. That afternoon we went to Praise in the Park in Kyabram, a town about 30 km away - a church summer initiative to bring all the churches together and make it open to everyone in the town. there was a free BBQ and Rob Hunter, whose family have pretty much adopted Merryn (and me while i was there!) as the daughter they never had, talked about being spiritually whole with the analogy of peaches from his tree in his garden! i met lots more very nice people and we went back to the Hunters for coffee afterwards. They are a really lovely family, 4 boys of various ages, and just so welcoming.

My first week at the practice was fairly busy. my very first patient was a baby grey kangaroo who had a suspected snake bite. She was pretty sick but the test was negative and i think she was diagnosed with Clostridium perfringens endotoxaemia in the end. It was amazing to be so close to such an animal, and i got the sense that i was definitely in Australia now! There is quite a severe drought on in the area so we saw lots of pneumonia cases, brought on by the dust and the heat and feed stress. Its also pregnancy diagnosis season (preg testing, PDing, PTing, whatever you call it!) so there was a lot of the traditional and stereotypical sticking your hand up cows bottoms! the vets had an ultrasound scanner so were pretty quick but i got to have a go at every 3rd or 4th cow. i cant say i was any good at it, but i did improve over the weeks and got a basic idea. in the small animal clinic there was a speight of broken legs that needed pinning so i got to watch a few of those. its a bit bizarre having a sterile field and all these surgical instruments and then cutting the bone pins with a massive pair of bolt cutters!

Merryn's not one for stopping home long so we had a fairly busy social life too. On the Monday we had tea with her sister Jess and brother-in-law Cam and their kids, as mentioned above. Cam is a teacher and full of slightly useless but interesting facts. we watched a bit of Dad's Army while there, a very bizarre idea from my POV! Tuesday Jess and the kids came around for tea but i missed that as i didn't get home until 9.30pm, as i was out with vet Keith doing two caesarians on different farms, back to back! Keith had to remind me that some calves are born the normal, natural way as i hadn't seen a regular calving yet! Wednesday we had tea with the Hunters before bible study, which Merryn led, watching a video on persecuted Christians in South America. Very moving and powerful and really makes you realise exactly how easy we have it in the Western World. On Friday Merryn's friend Simone came to stay and we went for a walk at dusk with her Kelpie dog Jaime. It got rather dark and we walked a long way so decided to cut back across the fields. Simone is lovely but rather too easy to scare, which i slightly took advantage of, telling her the heifers were chasing us (kind of true, they were following!) and pointing out a bull only a few metres away, but behind a fence she couldn't see in the dark! At the weekend the Hunters' second oldest Matt came home from uni so we spent a day with him before going to the cinema to see Run, Fatboy, Run which was very funny. it was odd seeing London on the screen and knowing all the places they were filming in, and when we came out i think i expected to walk out onto a London street and not Echuca in the heat. it was generally very hot, often over 35 degrees and the flies were appauling. On the Sunday we went to church in the morning then went to Narelle's to watch Peter Pan and eat cake. In the evening we went to the alternative church service, on anger management, including a very interesting DVD and lots of good music.

The second week i saw a whole range of things at the vets - i went blood testing calves for Enzootic Bovine Leucosis with Keith (lots of climbing in and around races trying to find tail veins and not get squashed or kicked), did some preg testing with Keith and Sally, saw lots of lame and sick cows (farmers don't do their own foot treatments over here it seems) and quite a few "dirty" cows with infections after calving. on the small animal side there was a kitten with meningitis, which we had to put to sleep in the end, a couple more broken legs and a kelpie that decided to play with a snake (as you do!) so had a suspected bite but was ok in the end. I also saw a cow with woody tongue - a Hereford cow with her tongue all swollen up and sticking out. The second week at bible study we looked at dealing with failure and dissapointment, which went nicely with the Sunday evening service's theme of anger management. I dont think i have ever looked at these issues properly from a Biblical viewpoint and it was really interesting. I never considered that the things that make us most angry are probably the ones that we care the most about and therefore should put most of our energy into solving, both on a personal small scale and in terms of global issues. We went to tea with Merryn's sister Jess and her family and christened the new DVD player with the BBC's Pride and Prejudice (ah, a classic!) and the Bollywood version Bride and Prejudice!

Over my second weekend there my friend Hannah from college was travelling in Australia so we met up in Melbourne to do the Great Ocean Road together. I borrowed Merryn's car and it was a fairly easy drive down to the city, although i did get a bit lost and confused switching between highways. it was slow going through the city streets not least because of these weird "hook turns" where you turn right from the left lane! very scary! It was F1 Grand Prix weekend so there was very little accomodation available so we ended up in a fairly swanky hotel, but we made the most of the 'all you can eat breakfast" and took some pastries for the journey. Because of the grand prix the tram system was working entirely differently to normal and they had blocked off some fo the roads to it took us over an hour to get out of the city, and we were already late up as Hannah's clock was on the blink and showing random times! We'd just about got ourselves sorted and settled for a good road trip when we got lost in Geelong as well! Our first stop was at a beach just south of Torquay - almost completely empty but very beautiful. it wasnt quite warm enough for a swim without a wetsuit but we did enjoy a bit of a paddle and some rockpooling. back on the road, past a huge number of people doing a mad cycle race up and down some seriously scary hills. We stopped for lunch in Lorne to eat posh salads and open sandwiches and radioactive looking fruit juice! the road then turned to forrest and farm land, and hannah felt compelled to stop and take a pciture of some dairy cows, which looked just the same as the ones in England to me! we were just enjoying the view of rolling green hills and some gathering fog when we realised the ground was alive with black crickets and Hannah beat a hasty retreat back to the car! For me the highlight of the weekend was seeing the 12 Apostles - not 12 any more but a bunch of rock monoliths just off the beach near Warnambool. The fog had been increasing as we drove so they looked really eerie but so beautiful. we hadnt planned any accommodation after abandoning the idea of getting all the way back to Geelong in one day, but we found a backpackers in the Lonely Planet and didnt have too much difficulty finding it, above a party shop. there was no proper sign for it but the door was open so we went in, but the whole place was deserted. there were doors open to the rooms and some people's stuff in there, and lights on, but absolutely no-one around. we were trying to decide what to do but it was getting a bit too horror-movie like for us, expecting something to leap out from behind a door or to find a freezer full of bodies or something, so we gave up and left. the people at the cinema next door didn't really seem to know anything about it either. We had tea at a buffet bistro place, also a bit odd, think the whole town is really, before finding a very nice backpackers on the other side of town, after going round a few roundabouts more than once, where ironically the TV was playing Ghost! We would have to drive quite a long way on to see much else and as i had to be back in Rochester that evening we decided to headback along the inland road, via Colac, not stopping at Cheeseworld, to Melbourne to check out the city. i have to say i was pretty dissapointed - there didnt seem to be anything there that was iconic or unique to the city. we wasted some time in an amusement arcade then took the free tram around the main city, looking for the Max Brenner chocolate cafe, but when we got there we were so hot we didnt want to eat anything. there is a certain beauty to the city but i dont think i want to go back there for any more time than i have already spent. So i said goodbye to Hannah and headed home, attempting to eat a melted kitkat while driving....not so succesful!

The third week was busy with Haemorrhagic Bowel Syndrome - both in a real case and in the vet meeting discussion, blood testing for Johne's Disease, a couple of calving that i got to do myself (2 dead one alive). Keith was writing an article for the local dairy farmers newsletter so i helped him out with that, creating a timeline diagram for him. When the practice was on the quiet side i occupied myself labelling drugs, throwing the ball for Jaime and helping the nurses with their homework. There were several amusing incidents, including me labeling Jaime with a "$13.95 inc GST" on her head, and then the next day a "I Love Al" sticker, beacause it is so true, and me losing my gumboots out of the back of Al's truck. I had a really amazing time there, everyone was so friendly and welcoming, and it was great to get to know so many of Merryn's friends and to get involved in the church, even for such a short time. We had drinks after work in reception on my last day, with all the wives and kids, which was fun. i let Jaime off the lead to play with Annie, the nurse's chocolate lab puppy, and Mitch and Al decided to feed her wasabi peas! so not good!

I spent Easter with Merryn's family in Tatong - towards to east of Victoria - as she was away on church camp. We had a fantastic dinner of curry, which i could have eaten loads of. Merryn's family are half Sri Lankan so it was the real stuff. I got to meet her parents again, plus brothers Caleb, Josh and Luke and sister Adele plus her grandparents and Aunt Lorraine, who worked in Rwanda with Rwanda Mission at Gahini hospital as a physio, where my mum worked when she was a missionary - small world ay! I spent 4 days there with them, helping Chris to build a chicken house - i learnt lots about framing and using a drop saw and stuff, i hope i wasnt too much of a hinderance! and generally just chilling out. It rained for the first time in 4 weeks, really massive thunder and lightning storms that rumbled around the valley. The have a small farm with chickens, cows and goats so i was taken out to inspect their new Welsh Black calf for its potential as the next bull. Hard to tell really when they are only 3 weeks old! I will really miss Merryn and everyone at the clinic, they were so good to me, and the Hunters, but i am sure i will be back for more work experience in the future!

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