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Dr Rupert Trembath grew up in his dad’s Northern Territory vet practice. Now in charge, he plans to expand equine services while keeping the family’s mixed-practice approach at the heart of the clinic. By Angela Tufvesson
In eight years of veterinary practice, Northern Territory local Dr Rupert Trembath has made a contribution to the profession that belies his age. The 30-year-old has pregnancy tested almost 500,000 head of cattle, earned a pilot licence to fly himself to jobs in remote locations and taken over the family practice, Katherine Vet Care Centre, with his wife, Sally. In 2025, Dr Trembath was named Katherine’s Young Citizen of the Year for his service to the community.
Yet he remains humble and practical, focused on providing care in Katherine—a regional centre of 10,000 people about 3.5 hours’ drive south-east of Darwin—and across vast swathes of northern Australia.
“I’m a local who was born and raised here, and from a young age I got stuck—but not in a negative way—in mixed practice and the small-town lifestyle, and I’ve never looked back,” Dr Trembath says.
Keeping it in the family
The son of well-known Northern Territory vet Dr Peter Trembath—who was the subject of the 1995 ABC documentary series The Flying Vet—Dr Trembath grew up trailing his dad at the practice or out on cattle stations.
“I would be in the car with dad heading out to jobs or spending the Christmas weekend at the clinic helping him out, just me and him,” he recalls, noting with a wry grin that he’s the only one of the family’s four boys to follow in his dad’s professional footsteps. “My dad was very happy when I became a vet. I’ve always been, and probably always will be, the favourite.”
Dr Trembath credits his dad, who first took over the practice in 1989, with instilling in him a strong sense of community and a commitment to mixed-practice veterinary care. He says the transfer of ownership to him and Sally after his dad’s retirement has been a smooth process.
“Dad is a man who has embraced change his whole life, and he is grateful that I’ve taken over from him. There’s never any sense of the old dog trying to do things his own way and not being open to change,” Dr Trembath says.
Vet in a plane
Dr Trembath believes Katherine Vet Care Centre is one of the last remaining truly mixed practice clinics in Australia. Depending on the time of year, the practice employs between three and seven vets, along with three nurses and a nurse manager.
“We do a lot of large-scale cattle work and equine medicine—surgery, reproduction, artificial insemination. We have onsite equine facilities, and we do small animal medicine, including orthopaedics and complicated cases,” Dr Trembath says.
We do a lot of large-scale cattle work and equine medicine—surgery, reproduction, artificial insemination. We have onsite equine facilities, and we do small animal medicine, including orthopaedics and complicated cases.
Dr Rupert Trembath, owner, Katherine Vet Care Centre
He says the broad nature of the work encourages high staff retention, with new graduate hires staying at the practice at least three or four years. “We mentor them into well-rounded vets who are comfortable in almost every situation, and we’re always there for them,” Dr Trembath says.
Owing to the practice’s remote location, Dr Trembath spends much of his time on the road—or in the sky—travelling all over the NT and beyond. “I could be doing skin consults and vaccinations at Gove and Groote Eylandt, flying myself there and back. Or I could be on a cattle station in the middle of nowhere pregnancy testing heifers or bull testing. We also fly to Alice Springs, Kununurra and the Torres Strait Islands,” he explains.
The decision to fly instead of drive to remote jobs is practical—and not at all glamorous. “I’m not all that excited about flying; I wouldn’t do it as a hobby. It’s often 40 degrees, there’s large thermals and it’s a bouncy flight with storms around. I do it purely to get somewhere fast and to save time,” Dr Trembath explains.
Refining equine expertise
Dr Trembath believes his greatest professional achievement so far is developing the clinical skills necessary to provide his clients with a ‘one-stop-shop’ of veterinary care, reducing the need for referrals to faraway locations.
“We are a clinic that relies on doing a good job, doing it then and there, and not sending clients for referral to Darwin or further afield. I put in a lot of work, practising and studying before doing surgeries,” he says, explaining that he’s treated every dog with a fracture that’s come into the clinic in his time as a vet. “I’ve had very good success with all sorts of nasty fractures.”
Dr Trembath says his main interests are in equine surgery and equine reproduction, and he notes a success rate of over 50 per cent consecutively with frozen semen. Looking ahead, developing an equine surgery facility is his “number one priority” for the practice. “I’ve got a horse surgery table sitting in a shed and in the next six months I want to have a surgery facility built with a drop-down box and have the horses on oxygen and sedated,” he says.
Also in the works is a formal equine reproduction set-up. “We’ve been breeding horses with artificial insemination for years, but I want to get to the point where I can incorporate that into the day-to-day running of the clinic and not have it as a hobby,” Dr Trembath says.
These developments aside, Dr Trembath says he isn’t planning to grow the practice, preferring to scale back his cattle work and spend more time at home in Katherine with Sally and their baby son, Archie. “I had a good upbringing watching dad work, and I hope to provide the same for my child,” he says.
Unsurprisingly, Dr Trembath hopes to safeguard the practice for the future: “Most definitely, I’d like to keep it in the family and pass it onto the next generation.”
