The next night, Geoff’s wife, Pauline, and Pete’s wife, Mandy, came to the conference’s formal dinner and we sat there in our crisp suits and ties like it was a bird surgery exam. Geoff was full of ideas, and one was that it would be a great idea if I came to Berry and went into partnership with Anthony. He was suturing all those loose ends of his life. I let his flippant plans for my future flutter away with the breeze. Geoff was still in his fifties, and I didn’t even know his daughter. It was all very far-fetched.
Fast-forward four years, though, and the perspective had changed.
As blokes, you don’t tend to pick up the phone to have a chat. Our annual Test match reunion, on the other hand, was great for checking in with what everyone was doing and talking about how good you used to be. Hussey and Haddin were destroying the Poms on their way to a 300-run partnership when Anthony asked me what my plans were.
I told him we were back in the country for good and that I was looking for something to buy into. Then I asked him what was happening at Berry now that Geoff was nearing retirement age. ‘What are you planning to do?’
‘I was intending to buy it from Geoff,’ he said, ‘but I’m not sure I want to run the whole thing by myself. It’s a matter of finding the right person.’
‘What about me?’ I said, taking a sip from my plastic cup of beer. ‘What do you reckon?’
I’d like to think that a Mexican wave went around at this exact moment or that I at least got to punch a beach ball away from approaching security guards as Anthony answered.
‘Maaaaaate, that’d be great. Maybe I should put you in contact with Geoff for a chat.’
It was a long process. Ronnie and I had to discuss whether it was something we wanted to do. For me, it was about going back to mixed practice, which had always been my preference. But we were getting married and had bought an apartment and renovated. To leave it all and move to the country was a huge shift, especially for Ronnie. She’d grown up in the city and the work she could do there was different from what she could find in Berry. On the other hand, we’d set a date for our wedding and were planning to get cracking on the business of having a baby very soon. Life was about to change for us regardless. So we just had to choose how much.
My only experience of that part of the NSW South Coast was doing prac work at Anthony’s dad’s farm. I knew Berry was a pretty little town, a country retreat for city folk, and that was about it.
So Ronnie and I spent a couple of weekends staying at Anthony’s place to test drive the town. On one of them, we spent a spectacular couple of days enjoying the last weekend of my twenties, visiting the wineries and restaurants that Berry had to offer. While there, we weighed up our options. We thought about buying into a Sydney practice or even starting our own. But Berry just seemed like the best way to go – how could we say no? It was truly a beautiful spot. Once we’d decided it was our preferred option, we told Anthony during a party at his dad’s place, and then we spoke to Geoff.
I had to come to terms with Geoff and figure out when he wanted to go, and we had to organise a loan and the contracts. It was a long process, during which Ronnie and I married and Ronnie fell pregnant.
In June 2012, some twenty months after the cricket game, we made the move. We rented a little house ten minutes away from Berry, at Gerroa, a village that straddles a headland jutting into the Pacific Ocean. Our house was a tiny brick place right on the promontory, designed as if its million-dollar view didn’t exist – you had to stand on the toilet to look down Seven Mile Beach, with all its misty moods and magic sunsets. Nevertheless, the location and the view reinforced the idea that there was so much magic out there if you could just extricate yourself from the rat race to find it.
The very first day I worked at Berry, I got home at about 6 p.m. and was alone because Ronnie was still working in Sydney and staying at our flat in Manly. It was already dark and I opened the door for Bailey to go into the backyard. She immediately waddled onto the grass and started barking.
‘What’s up, Bailey?’
She was agitated, trying to tell me something was awry. She was fixated on the ocean and kept barking as she edged closer to it in the manner of fraidy-cat dogs.
‘What are you doing, Bailey? What are you barking at?’
I looked out to the ocean and there, probably thirty metres from where the backyard ended, I saw a dark shape wallowing in the moonlight. Then it breathed a snorting breath. It was a whale, and Bailey wasn’t happy about it.
‘It’s okay, Bailey. It’s okay.’ She wagged her tail and came over for a pat as I realised that a mother and calf were out there kicking around, tails breaching. Wow! What a spot.
The next night I went to Geoff and Pauline’s place for dinner. A neighbour was there too. ‘Did you see the whale last night?’ they said.
‘Yeah, I did. Amazing.’
‘Unbelievable how close it was. Honestly, we’ve lived here forty years and I’ve never seen one that close before.’
‘I’ve been here one day and I expect whales at my back door every night for the duration. Anything less and I’m moving.’
There were no more whales, but to have been able to plonk myself on the back lawn and enjoy that show reinforced the feeling that there was a certain magic to the area. It has continued to deliver metaphorical whales ever since.
UP TO OUR ARMPITS AGAIN
Anthony
We knew that going into business might spoil a good friendship. But we figured that wasn’t a good enough reason not to do it. Knowing someone as well as we knew each other gave us a better understanding of how the other worked. We were the same age, had the same teaching and similar values. It had to be a good start.
All my life I’d worked with guys who were much older than me. The Geoffs had children who were my age, so those relationships had been more like a father–son thing. We’d never gone for a drink on a Friday afternoon. So it was quite refreshing, the first Friday of being in business together, when James asked, ‘You want to go for a beer?’
It was a nice way to end the week. It was exciting to work with someone with the same ambitions and same desire to build the practice; somebody who was at the same stage of life, trying to make ends meet while putting things in place for down the track.
We thought we’d get on okay, but we didn’t realise how synergistic the working relationship would be. We’ve both got our own strengths, yet we share ideals and a work ethic. It was still just the two of us working the whole practice, though, so we could hardly say that we’d got the work–life balance right.
First up, we renovated the Berry clinic. We’d be in at 5 a.m. doing paperwork or working on the renovations. We’d do the full day’s rounds and then through the evening we’d tackle all the things we hadn’t been able to get to during the day – ultrasounding, X-raying, fixing broken legs. The nurses couldn’t hang around late, so we’d do a lot of stuff together. Sidney and Ronnie might come in to meet us for dinner. We’d walk down the street and eat, then the two of us would go back to work while the girls went home.
As soon as the renovation was finished, we began work on opening a new clinic in Shoalhaven Heads. It started out as a large bare room. We had the walls put in, the lights and power and a special floor. We painted it ourselves. It was the middle of winter, freezing cold. We’d be in there at 5 a.m. with a single bare light on an extension cord to light the whole place. The fog of our breath impeded the view of our work. If stress was ever going to crack the partnership, this was when it was most likely to happen.
‘When we need to redo the next clinic,’ I said, almost up to my armpits in a paint tin, ‘we’re paying painters. This is the last bloody vet clinic I’m painting.’
‘Done,’ James said. ‘It’s a deal.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We hope that you have as much fun reading this book as we had writing it. Mark Whittaker is a great friend and client and we thank him for helping us transpose our stories onto paper – we both looked for
ward to our afternoon sessions telling our stories to Mark – and not once did he make us feel that this was just a job for him. Thanks for all your work! Let it be said that Mark is much better at faking interest than our wives!
This book would never have happened without the vision and commitment of Brigitta Doyle, Kate Mayes and Mary Rennie from ABC/HarperCollins. Their passion for this project from the very beginning is what got the book off the ground and it has been an absolute pleasure working with them all.
Of course, our lives changed dramatically when the one and only, the whirlwind, the phenomenon that is Rodney Richmond walked through the Berry Vet Clinic doors some three years ago now and initiated what would one day become Village Vets. What started as an idea soon became a pilot and, in the hands of Screentime and Foxtel, a television series. Rod’s mateship and dedication have been unwavering.
Thank you also to Simone Landes for helping guide us through the wild media world and for putting up with our rowdy conversation and unfunny jokes on a weekly basis – we can appreciate why you don’t like conference calls.
Thank you to everyone that has helped us in our careers, and especially the vets who took the gamble to employ us as the new green graduates we were. Ben Gardiner, Geoff Manning and Geoff Scarlett, you taught, supported and mentored us in our formative first few years in the profession and continue to do so today.
The vets and nurses that we have worked with, worked for and met through our profession have all helped shape us as vets and people, and we are immensely proud to be part of the veterinary profession.
Thanks to our wonderful clients, friends and their animals in Berry and beyond. We may live in the best part of the most privileged country in the world, yet dealing with lovely people every day makes our work so much more fun. Your commitment to your pets and livestock never ceases to amaze us and we thank you for involving and trusting us with your animals’ care.
The Berry Vet Clinic staff and their families deserve a particularly big thank you. Our workplace is a lot like a family and your hard work is much appreciated. You keep the ship afloat when we are gallivanting around the countryside and further afield. We cannot thank you enough for your professionalism and friendship, and it makes coming to work every day a pleasure.
Thank you to our wives, Sidney Bennett and Veronica Carroll. You both knew you were marrying vets but we bet you didn’t expect this. We appreciate your unwavering support and constructive criticism, but mainly your unwavering support. We know we work long hours and we both wish we were home a lot more often with our families. We probably occasionally come home a bit grumpy but we hope you know that we are doing it all for you – we love you both very much.
Thank you to our parents for raising us in such a caring and nurturing manner and endlessly encouraging us to keep working hard. Without the support of our parents and siblings we could never have survived our high school and university days, and undoubtedly our careers would be significantly different.
While clearly not an instructional manual on how to be a vet, we hope that this gives people an insight into what it’s like to be in a mixed-practice, and that vets and aspiring vets can relate to the stories and the fun and variety of challenges we are privileged to experience every day!
COPYRIGHT
The ABC ‘Wave’ device is a trademark of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and is used under licence by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia.
First published in Australia in 2015
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Anthony Bennett and James Carroll 2015
The right of Anthony Bennett and James Carroll to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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ISBN: 978 0 7333 3418 4 (paperback)
ISBN: 978 1 4607 0490 5 (ebook)
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Bennett, Anthony, author.
Village vets : one country town, two best mates and a farm
load of animals / Anthony Bennett and
James Carroll with Mark Whittaker.
Bennett, Anthony.
Carroll, James.
Veterinarians – Australia – Biography.
Veterinary medicine – Australia.
Country life – Australia.
Other Creators/Contributors:
Carroll, James, author.
Whittaker, Mark, author.
636.089092
Cover design by HarperCollins Design Studio
Front cover image by Nicholas Wilson
Back cover image by Stuart Scott
The papers used by HarperCollins in the manufacture of this book are a natural, recyclable product made from wood grown in sustainable plantation forests. The fibre source and manufacturing processes meet recognised international environmental standards, and carry certification.
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