Shine Awards: Boort vet Fiona Caine nominated
Cows, Kelpies, echidnas and even kangaroos are in safe hands when country vet Fiona Caine is on duty.
The role of a county vet can be as varied as treating a cow one day and an echidna the next.
It takes special talent to provide everything from worming tablets to complex surgery that city vets would have to refer to a specialist.
Such are the moving parts of the life of Fiona Caine, who is the only vet in Boort.
Childhood visits to relatives near Swan Hill was as close as Fiona got to country life until she decided to spend her first year as a graduate in a rural practice.
She took a one-year posting at Boort Veterinary Services – and never left.
“I really liked the community and then I met my now husband, who was not from the district but was working here,” Fiona said. “It was the little things about living in a small town that I loved, like the local supermarket worker asking me what I was having for dinner.
“You don’t get that in the city.”
Fiona came to the Boort practice to pursue her interest in reproduction in cattle, which at the time formed 85 per cent of vet jobs.
When the practice owner wanted to sell, Fiona wasn’t prepared to leave the community without a vet, so she bought it.
“I am the only vet in the region and people can travel up to 130-140 kilometres to bring their animals here,” she said.
Much of her work is small animals, but like all country vets, she has her share of echidnas, kangaroos and birds that find their way across her doorstep.
“It is part of being a rural practice that you work with wildlife, treating them and then handing them on to carers, though some have been known to come home too,” Fiona said.
As if she is not busy enough, the mother of two throws herself into the local community and has held a number of roles in school organisations as well as sporting groups, including president of the hockey club.
“It is nice to be able to go to things and just be a hockey mum and not the vet – it’s not that I don’t love my job, but it can be all encompassing,” she said.
Fiona is a nominee in The Weekly Times Shine Awards, supported by Harvey Norman.
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