BVSc (Qld), DipApplSc, Veterinarian
Dr Gary Ashton is a male Veterinarian.
Born on a dairy farm in Dayboro, a one pub town 60km northwest of Brisbane, Gary loved life on the farm and was always a keen observer of animals, including the platypus in Terrors Creek. He moved to the outskirts of Brisbane for a high school education, but kept returning to the Dayboro farms to work for some extra cash. He has a broad love of agriculture in general; his thoughts were if you want to eat, have clothes on your back, then you must have an interest in agriculture.
After high school, he accepted a scholarship to the Queensland Agricultural College (now part of University of Queensland) to study a general agriculture course. He learnt to study effectively there and three years into the course (leaning towards animal production) realised he would have to compete with veterinarians. He was accepted into Veterinary Science at University of Queensland and graduated at the end of 1979. Gary took his first job at Numurkah near Shepparton Victoria in a dairy practice and worked hard diagnosing diseases.
Soon after, he worked at Kerang in mixed practice before taking up full time position at Mt. Gambier, South Australia in a dairy mixed practice. Gary performed some goat embryo transfer work before taking up a position as a locum at Campbelltown Veterinary Hospital. He has not managed to make it back to Queensland yet!
Gary enjoys small animal medicine and surgery but loves farm animal work as he understands both the medical and financial sides of animal production. To Gary, work is mostly fun and it is great to be able to help both the animals and their owners with their problems. To this day, Gary is always learning.
