Desert Air - 61. DA Ch 61 - New Digs

In the end, I not only bought the Land Rover that I had seen in the yard the other day, but I also bought a Toyota Fortuner GXL, which is diesel and four wheel drive, and I said that I would collect the Fortuner tomorrow morning.

Rhodes followed me back to the clinic, where I parked my Land Rover in my usual sheltered parking spot, while Rhodes parked in the customer parking bays, and he followed me inside. “Julia, Amanda, this is my younger brother Rhodes, bro, this is Julia, my admin mastermind, and Amanda, my wizard vet Nurse,” I said making the introductions, just as Auggie came out from the treatment room he uses.

“This is my colleague, Dr Auggie Hunter. Aug, this is my younger bro, Rhodes,” I added and they shook hands. “Excuse me Dr Kendrik, you have a telephone message from the builders, to let you know that your new home is ready for you to move in,” Julia said to me.

“Thanks for that, let me check on Marcus and I will be right back,” I said to my brother. “Hey mate, how are things,” I said as I walked into the other consulting room, “All good thanks boss, just giving this little one some worm treatment, and then all is good,” Marcus replied, and I headed to my office to check on how things are going, and Julia was there working on accounts due.

“Hey boss, just getting up to date with the accounts,” Julia said to me, “That is good to know, I rely on you a great deal, so much so, I am thinking of having you as my administration manager, and employ a new receptionist to do the front desks tuff,” I said.

“Well I have a younger brother Shane, who has plenty of admin reception work experience, for the past four years for an accounting firm in Broome, until he was made redundant,” Julia said to me, “Good, have him come in for an interview, and we will take it from there,” I said to Julia.

“He is at home in Perth, but I can get our mum to put him on a plane as soon as possible,” Julia said to me, “Ok, that will be good, but before you do that, maybe you can arrange a telephone interview,” I replied, “Ok, I can do that now, if you want to speak to him,” Julia said.

Ten minutes later, I had received an email with Julia’s brother’s resume, and I had just finished interviewing him for the job here, and I was happy with the interview, and asked him to come up to Kununurra to start work in two weeks time.

After completing the interview, I drove over to the building company to collect the keys for my new home, while Rhodes headed back to the resort to pack up his things.

As I collected my keys for home, I was informed that the new clinic would be ready to be occupied in a week’s time, which I was thrilled to hear.

I headed back to the resort to collect all of my belongings, before leading the way to my new home, which can be accessed from a side access track that runs along the side of the new veterinary clinic at the airport.

What is this place that we just passed by?” Rhodes asked me as he followed me to the front door of the house. “Well mate that is my new veterinary practice, which will be open next week, and behind the house is my double hanger for the two planes,” I replied. “It looks huge, bro, do you need all of that space?” Rhodes asked me.

“Yes, because it is the only veterinary practice in 400 kilometres, and it includes recovery areas for birds, cats, dogs and even reptiles, and the large garden that you see, is my four climates garden, which I will be sharing with my two pets,” I replied.

“Wait, you don’t mean that echidna and frilled neck lizard do you?” Rhodes asked, and I chuckled at this, ‘Yes, it is Spike and Frilly, they have grown attached to me, and won’t go back to the wild, as they are comfortable living with me, which has caused a few problems at the current vet clinic, but now they will have all of this space to run around in,” I replied.

As Rhodes and I settled into my new home, we relaxed and sitting in the lounge overlooking the back courtyard and the four climates garden, I smiled as I thought how well things were going for me, even thou the family has had it’s up and down.

A week quickly passed by, with Rhodes heading home in his brand new car, and I arranged for the station Ute, to be trucked back to the station. When the day had come for the official opening of the new Limestone Veterinary Hospital and Wildlife Rescue Centre, where Spike and Frilly had settled in well into their new four-climate garden home.

I revealed to the staff the night before that the new vet hospital is ready to be opened, first thing in the morning, I arrived at the old clinic, two hours ahead of opening time, and I printed out a sign for the front door. “Closed today, for relocation to new Vet Hospital. Call for any emergencies.”

Once the sign was on the door, I headed to the drug store room and started to pack everything, and once I has done that I found another box and started to pack other supplies. By 7.30 Auggie and Marcus had arrived and joined in with the packing up of everything, with Angela and Julia helping shortly after.

Today is also the first workday for our new veterinary nurse, Angela Cunningham, who arrived just on usual opening time, and she was let inside and put to work to help with packing, and our new receptionist is due to arrive in a few days time.

At 11 am, I called a stop to work, with 90% of the packing completed. “Right, for those who have4n’t worked it out yet, the new veterinary hospital is located on Laine Jones Drive, between the Airport terminal and the Kimberly Air Tours centre.

On the Airfield side of the property are my hanger for my two planes, with my new home behind that, and the Vet Hospital at on the Drive side of the property, with twenty customers parking bays, and six undercover Staff parking bays.

I suggest that we load up all of the essential supplies into our own vehicles, and make a convoy to our new work place, where we can put away what we bring, before having a good look around the new facilities, which includes, a good sized apartment upstairs for our two veterinarians,” I announced.

That is what we did for the next twenty minutes, before driving to the new work location. “Holy cow, this place looks huge boss,” Marcus stated as he climbed out of his new work vehicle, looking at the new building with the huge sign announcing my new veterinary practice.

Once all of the essential supplies had been put away, we began having a tour of the whole property. Firstly, with the waiting room and reception area, and the two main consulting treatment rooms, which have a number of storage rooms, male and female bathrooms, followed by a large hallway that leads to the Radiology laboratory, with additional storerooms?

Leading off the waiting room, is a hallway that leads to a third consulting treatment room, and the administration centre that can reached off this laneway as well as from the reception office. The large rear hallway leads to my manager’s office, staff lounge with a kitchenette, two staff bathrooms, two supply storerooms, and a lift and stairs leading to the upper level.

There are also two large animal holding rooms, one for dogs with 18 cages, and one for cats with 24 cages, and behind these rooms are the two animal exercise rooms, with four large feed storage bins, for keeping the animals all fed.

I had designed the complex to have separate sections, so as too avoid contamination in case there is a sickness outbreak between the animals, with a covered walkway linked between the buildings. Behind the main complex, there is another covered walkway that links to the reptile rehabilitation centre, with various sized cages and behind that is the bird rehabilitation centre with various sized cages.

Along both sides of the three buildings are covered walkways, for weather protection during the wet season, which also provides shade protection to the buildings, and the roof on the front of the complex has a large row of solar cells, to assist with keeping the power bills down, especially with the whole complex having varied temperature controls.

We spent the rest of the day moving all of the supplies and equipment to the new vet hospital, and we managed to complete the day without having to stop for any emergencies. Everything was completed by the end of the day, leaving an empty shell at the old clinic, which has just three weeks remaining on the current lease.

Marcus and Auggie moved into their new accommodation in the new complex, they were both pleased with the bigger bedrooms and extra living space, and there is a spare bedroom for guests. I had also arranged for the employment of a vet nurse to be based in Derby, to assist Jessica with that clinic, and the age of 25, Seamus Lynwood, was very happy to be working in outback Western Australia.

Now with a total of four vets including three vet nurses, as well as five auxiliary staff, and myself I had grown from a small one man practice in Marble Bar to a large north-western Practice with a total of twelve staff, life seemed to be going very well. Even though I was doing a lot more government work instead of visits to regional cattle stations, I still managed to do two days every week.

With Mum’s approval, we built some quarantine stockyards on Newry Station 2.2 kilometres West of the Victoria Highway, and 12 kilometres south-east of the border, where there is an existing station track, which was upgraded to a proper gravel road.

The new quarantine stockyards have a large loading and unloading ramp, and laneway that are 400 metres long. Leading off this laneway are two sets of yard paddocks on each side, with a narrow separation lane between each paddock.

A fifth yard paddock located at the end of the laneway, also has a separation lane between the yards, to keep all the stock well apart, with each paddock being fifteen acres in area, to allow plenty of space for larger mobs. Each paddock has two water troughs and two feed troughs, plus a bale holder, which allows the stock to eat the hay, without the bay being on the ground.

Just 50 metres before the yards, there is now four modular buildings two on each side of the road, and machinery shed. One modular building has the administration office, which includes two UHF radios, with a tall radio antenna outside, that has a range of 60 kilometres, which can easy reach Kununurra.

Meanwhile Mum and Uncle Owen had decided to enlarge their station holdings again, with the purchase of Auvergne Station which is on the eastern boundary of Newry Station, plus Waterloo Station, which brings the family pastoral holdings to 6 cattle stations and a staggering 4.763 million acres in area.

With the business now in full operation, I was keeping busy as ever, and when not flying to a cattle station in my plane, I was spending time at the quarantine stockyards, which includes a truck-wheel disinfection bay, and a truck washing area, with the water runoff contained and allowed to evaporate.

I was spending very little time in the vet hospital or my office, which is running very smoothly thanks to Julia, and even the Derby clinic was getting a lot more busier.

I decided to drop off one of my vets to Derby when making a supply run and collect them the next day, to assist with the work-load, with Auggie and Marcus taking it in turns to do that each week.