Bendigo

Life falls into a routine with runs and swims in the evening whenever possible and Kate, Cassie and I start playing tennis too. This week there are some strange surgical cases to challenge me but luckily  things go well.Saturday is a quiet day then Kate and I have an early start to Vet some cats at a local show on Sundy- the cats show varying amounts of enthusiasm for this! We meet Cassie for breakfast at an amazing place in Murchison and then she and I head over to Bendigo for a day trip.
Bendigo is part of the Australian Goldfields after gold was discovered in 1851. The mining continued until 1954 which was much later than some of Victoria's other gold towns. It's a small town with a pretty park, a mine tour which we decide not to visit and a chinese museum which we do. Chinese immigrants were an important and controversial part of the Australian Goldrush, coming at a time when chinese economics left many very poor so immigration was attractive.

Victorian Alps

Another week at work then a trip with Kate, another locum Vet, to the Victorian Alps. It's 2 hours drive which soon passes under cruise control and we arrive in Mansfield. We take a drive around some lakes which reminds me a lot of the lake district and it's another moment of disorientation for me until we step out of the car and the smell of eucalpts and song of Australian birds orientates me once more. It's great after Tatura's flatness to have hills again. On Sunday we drive up to Mount Buller, essentially a ski resort, out of season with a rather deserted feel. It's a cold morning and as we drive up through forests, around hairpins the morning sunlight hits the ground in rays and steam rises.
Up at Mt Buller and it's 8 degrees, in warm clothing and hats we start our walk- beautiful views all around of fir-covered slopes. Soon we could shed our layers as the day warmed up but we did see a tiny patch of snow!

Echuca

The first week at work's tiring as any new job will be, then I get into it and by the 3rd week the honeymoon's over and it's work as usual! It's a good practice though and with the barrage of new cases I'm learning a bit.

The first weekend I'm pretty tired and saturday's chilled out and going to the pub with the girls from work. On the Sunday I drive over to Echuca- a town on the Murray river (which marks the border between Victoria and New South Wales) and once important in the wool trade with paddlesteamers transporting the produce. Today the paddlesteamers are just for the tourists. There's a beautiful path along the river beneath the Red gums and I enjoy a walk. Bizarrely the town has a celtic festival going on and the sound of bagpipes is incongruous with my shady gum trees!

On the way home I stop at the Great Ozzie Beer shed - which gets a Rough Guide mention- and it clearly some guy's obsesson but impressive!

Then long, straight roads all the way home.

Work in Tatura

Finally, after months of meeting every nationality but Australians, I'm surrounded by them. Tatura is a small town. Populaton 3533 it's even smaller than Hebden Bridge. It's totally flat- dairy and fruit country. At first it seems a bit weird to be so far from everywhere in this little town but quickly it becomes home.

Apart from the difficulty in finding my brain after 3 months of no work there are a few obstacles. Different drugs or where the same ones exist different trade names, worse still different diseases- mostly due to this being Australia but also partly due it being rural Australia with dogs on farms and few cats actually being brought to the Vets.

"Cats generally get desexed, maybe have their first innoculations and then we tend not to see them until they get bitten by a snake" Jill tells me. Ah, snake bites... I find out the protocol for treatment, not cheap with vials of antivenom at $500, luckily there's no paralysis ticks and also no heart worm to speak of although prophylaxis is on offer. My first full week involves treating snake bite, tetanus which I've never seen before and suspected organophosphate poisoning after orchards were sprayed. Later I encounter rat bait poisoning- a real problem since there's a mouse plague and try to rebuild many dogs run over - not on busy main roads- but by their owner's on their property! Hmm, so when owner's are not poisoning their dogs, they're running them over!

The staff are really nice and their slightly alien terms and ubiquitous greeting of "How're you going?" soon become commonplace. Meanwhile I make them laugh with my English terms and politeness.

It's odd to work in a mixed practice and although I'm only treating the "smallies" my colleagues bring the smell of farms in, outside there's a crush for cow operations and on several days I'm left juggling cases after colleagues who were helping me work through the op list are called out to eternal calvings.

Almost every morning I awake to the sun shining, or as autumn progresses to it rising. Nights are starting to get a little chilly now but during the day it's still hitting a pleasant mid-twenties. If I walk to work I see the Rainbow Lorikeets and Galahs, beautiful yet common place garden birds. Their songs feel uniquely Australian.

Work lend me a 4 wheel drive. A big white beast of a car which is a gem to drive. It's 20 minutes up the road to Shepparton, the nearest big town and with the perpetual long straight roads I discover the beauty of cruise control- mainly to stop me speeding!