The All-Animal Vet

<p><strong>Cattle sheep horses and the occasional ostrich or buffalo - a vet on her own has to think on her feet!</strong></p><p>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.</p><p></p>