Business View Oceania - June 2023

24 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA VOLUME 5, ISSUE 6 with Murdoch, offers a lot of such guidance for new grads. Her husband and Bergman are adjunct clinical teachers. Nicole Swan is herself a distinguished alumna of Murdoch, a member of its class of 1988 and an honours graduate to boot. Her practice has gained quite a reputation nationwide, as Swan informed, and its vets handle cases within a radius of 1,000 kilometres (that’s just more than 620 miles to any of our Yank friends who might be reading this) from Esperance. They might go all over the Wheat Belt and on up to the northernmost reaches of Western Australia. “People from Over East have heard about us,” she said, “not just W.A. people.” Swan’s vets perform quite the walkabout. Their duties include a weekly clinic in Ravensthorpe. The daily workload is very varied. “We provide a 24-hour service to the Esperance community and surrounding areas, 365 days a year,” said Swan. “Our on-farm cattle and sheep consulting and management practices form an integral part of our business. We offer pregnancy testing of cattle, sheep and cattle disease investigation, faecal worm egg- counting and drench-resistance testing.” Swan’s professionals provide diagnostic and consultancy services to other vets nationwide. Sixty percent of this mixed practice is small animals, she informed, and the remainder is predominantly beef cattle, sheep and horses. “We also deal with a lot of wildlife and exotics,” she added, citing alpacas, small furries (such as rabbits, ferrets and Guinea pigs) and reptiles. Swan’s clinic has three consultation rooms, a large renovated dog ward with under-floor heating, a cat ward and an isolation ward.