This document discusses veterinary professional services in peri-urban spaces around Melbourne. It finds that there are over 50 veterinary practices and over 100 veterinarians and veterinary nurses serving the peri-urban area. These practices range from those with a rural focus to those focused on urban clients. They demonstrate hybrid models and help meet the needs of both farming and companion animal communities. Veterinarians are significant employers in peri-urban areas and their practices have economic impacts and influence land use patterns as peri-urban areas continue to change and expand.

1. Provision of Professional Services in
Peri-urban Spaces
Edgar Burns, Sociology, La Trobe University
Beyond the edge: Australia’s first national peri-urban conference 1-2 October 2013, Melbourne

2. Introduction:
veterinary professional services in
the peri-urban space
1. Veterinary work not obvious in planning and urban
design
2. Food security - legal veterinary powers in disease
outbreaks
3. Peri-urban veterinary practice
 An instance of professional service delivery
 It in turn, helps reflection on how urban change is managed or just
happens

3. Older veterinary distinctions
Terms:
• Farm animals v domestic animals (pets)
• Large animal v companion animals (pets)
Themes:
• Rural animals and farm costs v income
• High value equine work
• Also, herd level action v individual pet care valued very
differently
• Men veterinarians, community involvement, hugely
changed

4. Peri-urban Melbourne

5. Peri-urban veterinary practice
1. Are there veterinary clinics in the periurban space?
2. If so, are there features we can associate
with that location?
3. What triggers to ‘larger’ questions of landuse, service provision, adapting to
population-residential change?

6. Veterinary clinics in the peri-urban space?
1. Used Vic State Gov Planning & Community
Development definition for Melbourne
» Regional municipalities excepted Geelong
2. Initial visiting intention limited to website
self-representation of veterinary practices
3. Vet practices range from distinctively rural
orientation to urban focus, and hybrid
forms

7. Indirect counting veterinary activity in
Melbourne peri-urban area
•
•
2/3 Australians own pets – Hypothesis: higher in peri-urban?
Approx 50 veterinary practices
• > 100 qualified veterinarians
• > 100 veterinary nurses
•
Another 25+ admin staff
The evolving
space is
interesting

8. Veterinary features of peri-urban location?
• Rural-facing or urban-facing?
•
•
•
•
Riding the tide of peri-urban change
Old practices – new practices
Two or more clinics, combined, in some instances
Visiting specialists
• In the peri-urban space
• Equine practice - contemporary best fit?
• Plus other species, intensified animal properties (alpaca)
• Animal acupuncture, organic pet-food
• New practices, different relationship to existing
communities

10. West Gippsland Veterinary Centre

13. Old Sale Road Veterinary Service Newborough

14. Inverloch Veterinary Services

15. Alexandra Veterinary Clinic

17. A number of veterinary practices have
no/ or minimal web presence, some
acting just as a digital brochure

18. Golden Plains Equine, Meredith

20. Speciality work

22. Brook St,
Sunbury
Re-purpose existing buildings
or dedicated premises

23. Meeting
an
urban/
lifestyle
market

24. Veterinary and ‘larger’ peri-urban issues
1. Veterinary clinics in the peri-urban space as nodes
for epidemics or bio-security at specific points of
human-animal interface
2. Feral and semi-owned cats, and dog populations –
rats... from urban sprawl in the peri-urban area;
foxes; native species
3. Food security – not fruit, carrots and horticulture,
but livestock, intensive or otherwise
4. Veterinary clinics as small businesses populating,
sim-city-like, the peri-urban zone. The dual ruralurban orientation of the veterinary function, though
not necessarily in individual practices

25. Other players than veterinarians
• Councils
• Farming
supply
• Pet supply
• Livestock
groups
• Clubs,
trainers,
agistment

27. Veterinarians as significant employers

28. Multi-site
practices
business
extension

29. Consciously facing
urban and rural

30. High-level
technology and
service provision

31. Variety of economic effects
1. Wages and local economic multiplier effect
2. Differences in employment in relation to general
farming activity
3. Today women veterinarians too
4. Veterinary nurses and other workers
5. Not just ‘breaking edge’ town/country but furtherback rural economic influence
6. High-tech equipment; group practice; o/heads
7. Purpose built clinics/ local property investment
8. Economic variations around Melbourne circumference

32. Insights from veterinary change?
•
•
•
•
Existing functions, extended or modified
Specialist functions, eg equine, dental
Land-use initiatives in specialist animals
Newcomer vets - companion animal focus
• Bottom-up initiatives rather than planned
» Not arguing an ‘invisible hand’ but asking what facilitates
service provision?
• Avoiding ‘good/bad’, nostalgia, but alert to land
use, a finite resource

33. Conclusion
• Veterinary service provision continuously
adjusting
• Peri-urban setting only one factor
• Land-use intensification
• Companion animal increase
• Present discussion assumes further peri-urban
expansion
• World shortage of rural veterinarians – is peri-urban location
a key?
• May one day stop or change, affecting land use, human and
animal populations