Tiffany - Wildlife in Far North QLD

In this episode you'll hear from Tiffany - a nurse at Boongarry Veterinary Services in Cairns. She works with the legendary Dr Annabelle Olsson a consulting vet for wildlife, zoos, and the various government agencies that manage endangered animals. As well as being a busy general practice Boongarry also treats thousands of wildlife cases a year, pro bono.

Wildlife cases in Far North QLD are different to wildlife anywhere in Australia. The wet tropics region (which is two million hectares between Townsville in the south and Cooktown in the north) is just 0.26% of Australia's landmass but the highest combined biodiversity of plants and animals in the country. We're so lucky to have this amazing variety of animals up here, many of which are rare or threatened and found literally nowhere else on the planet.

Tiffany does some crazy exciting nursing at Boongarry Vet which is purpose built to treat a huge variety of patients including big crocs - how big? Up to 4.5m. Yep, it takes a pretty unique skill set to be a vet nurse in a practice like this. Tiffany started working at Hartley's Crocodile Adventures when she was 14. She's been looking after wildlife since she was 10, and caring for macropods for 17 years. It's easy to be impressed by Tiffany, not just as a vet nurse. She recently bought her own house, which as a young, single mum on a vet nurse wage is something to be really proud of. I'm proud of her for sure, and the part of our story that she represents.