Cattle, sheep, horses, and the occasional ostrich or buffalo – a vet on her own has to think on her feet!
As a newly minted vet in rural Queensland, Margareta Shiel performed her first-ever caesarean on a cow at midnight by the lights of a tractor – the cow did fine. She went on to work in isolated clinics in Western Australia and eventually settled in Tasmania. Her lively stories, from improvising a catheter from some bits and bobs in the shed, to wrestling with a pig in a broken-down pen, to stitching in a prolapsed oviduct on an ostrich, show the hard work, self-reliance and resourcefulness needed for life as an outback vet – and the satisfaction of helping animals and their owners in the amazing country she travelled through.