I normally live and work in Northumberland, a county at the very top of England by the Scottish border.

I was brought up in the ‘home counties’, i.e. the South around London, but as soon as I qualified as a vet from Cambridge University I headed North, working first in the Peak District in Derbyshire, and then, when that was getting more populated, I ended up in the relatively empty far north.

It’s sparsity of population is due mainly to it’s distance from the capital, but also because the main industries of coal mining and shipbuilding centred round Newcastle upon Tyne have declined dramatically over the last fifty years or so.

My job at home is in a mixed practice, the large animal component of which is beef, sheep and horses. Just before I came away, we merged with a neighbouring practice, creating a 29-vet business. Our newly increased size does have lots of client benefits such as sharing of expertise, equipment, linked access between the many surgeries, and better purchasing power.

When I emerged from the plane after that 10,500 mile flight, I was gently taken aside by the immigration control people, who politely but very thoroughly, completely emptied my luggage, as I went through the red channel, denoting I had been in contact with animals in the last 2 weeks.

Understandably, alarm bells sound when someone comes in from a country currently experiencing not 1 but 2 notifiable diseases. Particular interest was shown in my work boots - thank goodness I’d bought a brand new pair - and a speck of something that could have been a bit of straw.

Eventually I was given the all clear, and in typically friendly New Zealand fashion was wished a nice day and a good trip: my first experience of kiwis was very positive.

I took a Northliner coach from Auckland up to Whangarei, trying to prop my tired eyes open all the way so I could take in the wonderful scenery on that route - what struck me was the similarity to my bit of England in that it’s very green, has very few people, and lovely rolling hills - although yours are more spikey and volcanic.

I saw the first of the many empty white sand beaches, of which I now have so many photos, and the first views of the dairy cows I’d be dealing with.

People say “Well, I suppose the cows are the same” – but New Zealand has my sort of cows! Not so many huge great Charolais or Limousins that tower above you and don’t always care if they crush you to death when you’re examining them, but small Jerseys, Ayrshires and Friesians which aren’t the tall Holsteins that I have to get on a box to pregnancy test at home.

Also the herd sizes are so different; although my home practice is not in a dairy area, we do have a few dairy herds, but the largest only milks about 100.

The result of this from the vet’s viewpoint is that we get called to see many more individual cow problems – mastitis, lameness, inappetance – which don’t always get so much attention when you may be milking 850!

Fertility issues, however, are a big concern in both countries; our cows are housed for 7 months of the year and even when frolicking at pasture still get fed concentrates to keep their milk production up – I’m sure this gives us more headaches with heat detection, cystic ovaries etc, than your more extensive system.

I do love working in your semi-outside parlours – no, I mean herringbones or rotaries – in the open air and sunshine – though I know I’m here at the right time of year! I also really enjoy my small animal work at the Ruakaka clinic: once the language barrier is surmounted (pig dogs? mobs? munted? rapt?), basically everyone and their animals have pretty much the same problems.

I’m doing this locum job for 5 months, and loving every minute. In March I’ve got 4 weeks to see the bits of New Zealand I haven’t managed to get to during my time off, and looking forward to seeing yet more of the country’s animals and farming systems. I doubt if I will be the last one from the Alnorthumbria Vets who asks for a sabbatical in NZ when they see my photos at home!