About Us
Bateau Bay Vets has been operating for more than 25 years, with ownership passing through three sets of hands. Can't tell you anything about the guy who started it, but I knew a bit about Michael Hartley who came before me.
Michael was a year ahead of me at Sydney University, and I took over his job at Castle Hill Vet Hospital when he came up here and started his life as a proprietor. Sadly, he got a particularly fierce form of leukaemia and died about a year after diagnosis. Michael had a philosophy about affordability, and it is one we have perpetuated.
Current Owner and Veterinary Surgeon
Since August 1998 we have invested a lot of time and money in expanding our capabilities.
This has involved a lot of training and equipment upgrades to improve both the quality and the range of procedures we can undertake.
Because we run a lean organisation we can afford the capital outlays required for this without having to try and reposition the business as a “veterinary Harrods” with a similar pricing structure. Not everything we do is about trying to generate profit, but also about interest and principle.
We have also undertaken a lot of work for charitable institutions like Cat Care, Hunter Pets, Coastal Paws and Dogs Cats and Horses to help them with achieving their objectives while maintaining viability, and more recently for Wyong Council for their Animal Care Centre, which has involved supporting their big and successful philosophical shift from “pound” to genuine re-homing and recovery.
When you have been in this industry for a couple of decades, you become well aware of the value people place upon their pets. But this about more than material possession.
A famous Sydney biologist years ago talked about animals and humans in terms of “the difference between us and them is one of degree and not one of kind”. And since the rollout of DNA sequencing the amount of similarity we share with our mammal friends makes this statement simple fact and not contention. “Animals Are Us”