Hastings Vet Clinic was opened by Andrew Browne on the 1st November 1976. At this point the clinic was only 6 squares in size with a small consulting room, a kennel room (shared between dogs and cats) and an everything else room. Until 1981 there was only one other vet providing veterinary services to the Mornington Peninsula. Andrew also opened a branch clinic in Red Hill that was staffed one hour a day. The vet was on call 24 hours a day.

The clinic was sold to Dr Mark and Sue West on 1st July 1981. At this point in time the work performed by the clinic included everything apart from racehorse work. There was an x-ray machine and a dark room with manual film developing, and anaesthesia was carried out using a Komasaroff twin bowl machine using halothane and methoxyflurane. There were no monitors at all in the very early days (apart from a stethoscope). There were lots of bone pinning’s and exploratory laparotomies, cow calving’s, horse geldings and of course small animal medicine. There were very few places to refer anything except for Werribee and Dr Rowan Blogg, the eye specialist in Malvern.

The Somerville Vet Clinic was opened in 1985 in its current location and was managed by Sue West for many years. Between 1986 and 1991 Andrew Browne re-joined the business and the Balnarring Vet Clinic was opened.

In 2009 Dr Matt Ray and Dr Alison Tudor joined the partnership along Mark and Sue. In 2018, after 37 years of practice ownership, Mark and Sue retired. In 2015 WVC ceased the large animal work to become a dedicated companion animal practice, and on-call work stopped in 2018 with the opening of two local emergency centers on the peninsula.

There have been 3 renovations at the Hastings Clinic, the most recent in 2013, when the clinic expanded from 2 to 4 consult rooms, created a dedicated surgical theatre with two tables, a preparation/non-sterile area with two stations, a dental room, an imaging room, and a separate dog, cat and isolation ward. More recently we have created a dedicated cat consult room, and a wellness room for rehabilitation, acupuncture, low stress blood pressure monitoring and euthanasias.

The Somerville Clinic was most recently renovated in 2019 to create an additional consult room, an imaging room for ultrasound and digital xray, full lab including biochemistry and haematology machines, and a more open waiting room.

After much hard work and dedication, in July 2023 Dr Abbey Scott and Dr Jessica Fielding joined the partnership after having both worked with WVC for over a decade. As the clinic continues to grow we are proud to be the largest independent practice servicing all the wonderful pets of the Mornington Peninsula.