From the classroom to cattle yards in the Gulf of Carpentaria: Tom Knight's Tropical Vets scholarship
A 3.30am wake-up call, a dirt airstrip, and a herd of cattle with an undiagnosed disease pressure. It’s not the typical week for a final-year vet student, but it's where the 2025 Tropical Vets JCU Scholarship took Tom Knight.
Image 1 and 2: Tom’s plane trip to the Gulf of Carpentaria
Tom, a recent James Cook University graduate now working in a mixed dairy, small, and large animal practice on the New South Wales south coast, credits the $5,000 scholarship with opening doors he simply wouldn't have had access to in his final year of study. "Once I received the scholarship from Tropical Vets, it really enabled me to go do quite a lot of things in my final year of uni without the stress of financial pressure," he says.
The scholarship took him to Central Queensland to work with cattle, and then further north to Innisfail, where he spent two weeks on placement at Tropical Vets with Dr Zane Squarci.
The Innisfail leg of the placement wasted no time getting into the thick of things. As Tom describes it, he'd barely settled in on the Sunday afternoon before Dr Zane popped his head in with the plan: a 3.30am start the next morning, a drive to Mareeba, then a chartered flight out to Delta Downs Station, west of Karumba, to investigate a disease issue on the property.
Reflecting on the scholarship, Tom describes the trip as "an incredible experience, gaining insight into the management practices of extensive beef systems, as well as learning more about indigenous Australian culture through both Zane's and the station manager's lived experience."
"I was thoroughly included in the process, performing postmortem procedures, contributing to differential diagnosis discussions, and mentored on concepts which I had not considered at the time," he shares. The postmortem work and lab results ultimately helped the station get to the bottom of what was going wrong, giving the team a practical win to show for the trip.
Back at the Innisfail clinic, Tom's placement rounded out into a proper mixed-practice experience. He scrubbed into a range of surgeries, from a soft tissue sarcoma removal and routine desexings to a palliative limb amputation for a dog managing osteosarcoma.
On the large animal side, he worked cases spanning equine colic through to artificial insemination and pregnancy diagnosis programs in beef cattle, gaining exposure not only to the veterinary side of things but to the farmers' perspective as well. Throughout it all, he found the Tropical Vets team, from vets and nurses to reception staff, generous with their time and happy to explain concepts as he worked through them.
Those two weeks in Innisfail built directly on skills Tom has carried into his career since graduating. Now doing herd health work, reproductive investigations, and postmortems of his own on the south coast.
Image 3: Tom in New South Wales after graduating from JCU Vet
"You definitely learn quite a lot from doing these rural placements, and it's quite beneficial to your career," he shares.
For JCU students weighing up whether to apply, Tom's advice is straightforward. "Just put an application in. The worst that could happen is that they pick somebody else, and the best that could happen is that you get a really good learning experience and some financial support from the Tropical Vets team to help you in your final year of uni."
“The placement was quite a remarkable experience, and the team are very friendly as well. So if you're worried about making friends wherever you go, I'm sure anyone at any of the Tropical Vets clinics will make you feel welcome."
Scholarship applications open on September 28 and close on Octoer 30. Check out the details here.
