When vet nurse Jodie Lardner-Smith needed to hand-raise a white rhino, she had to write a letter to an expert in South Africa to get advice on what to do.
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Having access to a world of information at her fingertips via the internet, and being able to email anyone she might need and get an instant reply is one of the biggest changes she's seen in her time in the role.
Ms Lardner-Smith is a veterinary nurse at Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo, NSW. She's been in the role for more than 35 years.
The white rhino she helped hand-raise for the first year of its life is one of the moments in her career she'll never forget.
"There's been some other really cool exotic things like cheetah cubs that we've hand-raised and they haven't always ended well but we've still been able to learn so much from those," Ms Lardner-Smith said.
"Then there are the native ones. I'm really into echidnas. Hand-raising echidnas is just really cool."
Ms Lardner-Smith's career started in private practice, working predominantly with dogs and cats.
A friend of hers mentioned Taronga Zoo in Sydney was looking for a bird keeper and despite knowing nothing about birds at the time, Ms Lardner-Smith applied and got the job.
After three-and-a-half years she moved to Dubbo.
Working at Taronga Western Plains Zoo's wildlife hospital, Ms Lardner-Smith cares not only for the zoo animals like the cheetahs and rhinos; she also helps any wildlife that is brought in.
After dealing with such a diverse range of animals, she jokes that she knows "a little bit about a lot of things".
"Some things you get an opportunity to specialise in a little bit more but otherwise you can have quite a broad expertise," the vet nurse said.
The workload at the wildlife hospital is split into two: the nursing round and the hospital section.
Those on the nursing round are helping with procedures, triaging the animals and covering the routine lab work, while the hospital round involves looking after the inpatients that need critical care or rehabilitation.
"I like having a bit of both. I think it's really important if you're a wildlife carer or a zoo veterinary nurse to be able to look at the whole picture of the animal, not necessarily just be able to monitor the anaesthetic but be able to know what its husbandry requirements are and about its biology," Ms Lardner-Smith said.
She no longer takes as many animals home to hand-raise. However, if any echidnas come in, Ms Lardner-Smith admits she likes to hog them.
'You don't get them very often. You might get one year for two years and then you won't see any for three or four years. So when you get them it's so amazing. Every one has a chance to teach you something and there's still so much to learn about those particular animals," she said.
If something like a platypus comes in and needs attention, or an animal they might not be as familiar with, Ms Lardner-Smith said she gets little bits of information from different people and collates them together to try and do the right thing for the animal.
While once she took a lot of the animals home to care for herself, now Ms Lardner-Smith works closely with WIRES volunteers and even keepers at the zoo to teach them about hand-raising animals.
For all of her career highlights, Ms Lardner-Smith said there was another side of the role that wasn't often discussed.
"There's a lot more death dealing with wildlife than you would ever expect. I don't think of it as a negative, I think of it as a way to relieve suffering. With the wildlife coming in, and the catastrophic injuries some of these animals get, you can't fix them all. Just to be able to efficiently and I guess calmly end their suffering, it's a really special thing to be able to do," Ms Lardner-Smith said.
She said euthanasia was part of her job that wasn't well understood.
"I think some people that bring animals to us think, 'oh, you just cut that bird's wing off and you can just live in a cage for the rest of its life. It'll be fine.'," Ms Lardner-Smith said.
"Imagine if you were soaring around the skies like a wedge-tailed eagle and you've had that amazing life experience and then you break both your wings and someone goes, 'oh I'll just put you in a cage'."
If she knows the bird will never be able to fly, Ms Lardner-Smith knows the better option is for it to be euthanised.
The worst day of her career was when four rhinos died due to an unknown cause, including the rhino she had hand-raised.
But Ms Lardner-Smith said she had stayed in the job for more than three decades because she loved the work and she had really great colleagues that had become like family.
Orlander Ruming
Writing for Central Western Daily, Daily Liberal and Western Advocate.
