There are businesses you visit, and then there are businesses that have been around so long they become part of the place without anyone really thinking about it.

For generations of Colac families, Rhodes Veterinary Clinic has been one of those places.

A dog is sick. A horse is injured. A calf isn’t coming. Something has gone wrong on the farm. Day or night, rain, hail or harvest, people have called Rhodes.

And for more than 70 years, the Rhodes name has been answering.

What sits behind that name is more than a veterinary practice with a long history. It is a story about a decorated wartime pilot, a father and son touring other clinics before designing their own, a little boy holding up a cow’s tail, another helping pregnancy-test cows before he was old enough to understand what was happening, and three generations who ended up in the same profession.

It starts with Dusty

The Rhodes story begins with Dr Dusty Rhodes.

Born in New Zealand in 1922, he took a route to veterinary medicine that was anything but ordinary. During the Second World War, Dusty served as a Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm pilot. He flew in combat and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and Bar for repeated acts of bravery.

After the war, he moved into a very different life. He studied veterinary science in Sydney, then eventually settled in Colac, where in 1952 he established Rhodes Veterinary Clinic.

Back then, rural veterinary work looked nothing like it does now. There were fewer vets covering huge areas, and reaching an animal could mean travelling long distances across the district. If something went wrong, you didn’t book online or head to a specialist. You called the vet, and the vet came.

Dusty worked across the animals that mattered to a farming community: dairy cattle, sheep, horses, thoroughbreds and family pets. His influence also stretched beyond his own practice. He served as President of the Victorian Division of the Australian Veterinary Association, sat on the Veterinary Board of Victoria and helped re-establish veterinary education at the University of Melbourne.

But the clinic was never just about one man. The work would pass on.

Growing up Rhodes

For Mike Rhodes, veterinary medicine was never really something he chose from scratch. It was already there.

His father was a vet. The clinic was part of everyday life. As a child, Mike went along on farm visits and helped where he could. One of his first jobs was holding up a cow’s tail while Dusty worked.

It sounds almost comic now, but for Mike it was simply part of growing up.

The clinic originally operated from the family home before moving near Colac Hospital. As it grew, Dusty and Mike began thinking about what the next version of the business should look like. That thinking was practical rather than sentimental. They travelled around in the 1970s, visiting other veterinary clinics to see how they worked, what could be improved and what they would do differently.

They took those ideas home and used them to design the purpose-built Rhodes Veterinary Clinic that became the practice’s long-term home.

It was a simple approach, really: look, learn, build better.

Then there was Ben

Ben Rhodes grew up in the same orbit.

By the time he was old enough to understand what a vet actually did, he’d already spent years watching his dad work. At about three or four years old, he insisted on helping Mike pregnancy-test cows. He didn’t understand the science. He just wanted to be part of it.

That curiosity lasted.

Veterinary science is not an easy road. Ben studied in Queensland, where he started university with 101 other first-year students. Five years later, only 23 of that group graduated together. He made it through, then came home to Colac, back to the practice his grandfather started and his father had spent decades building.

That is how a third generation begins: not with a grand handover, but with familiarity so deep it becomes a profession.

The cases that stay

Three generations of veterinary work come with a lot of ordinary days, but also a few that stay with you.

For Mike, one of those was a Siamese calf. It was unusual enough to be memorable; the kind of case that reminds you veterinary medicine can still surprise you no matter how much experience you have.

That is part of the job too. You learn to expect the unexpected. You learn that animals do not read the textbook. You learn that each day can change without warning.

And after enough years, those odd cases sit alongside the routine ones in the memory of a practice.

More than animals

Veterinary medicine is obviously about animals. But after more than seven decades, the Rhodes family knows that the animal is rarely the only one in the room.

There is usually a person attached. Sometimes an entire family. Sometimes a farming family under pressure. Sometimes someone delighted by a new puppy or kitten. Sometimes someone standing beside an animal they cannot save.

The Rhodes team has been part of all of it.

They’ve watched children grow up and come back with animals of their own. They’ve worked alongside generations of farmers. They’ve seen good outcomes and helped people through the hard ones too.

That is something people outside the profession often miss. Veterinary work is not only about diagnosis or treatment. It is also about trust, timing and knowing how to speak to the person standing next to the animal.

What longevity looks like

What does 70 years actually look like?

It looks like a family bringing their dog to Dusty, then years later bringing their own children and their own animals to Mike. It looks like farmers trusting the same name for decades. It looks like a clinic changing as veterinary medicine changes without losing the reason it exists.

And it looks like one generation handing responsibility to the next.

That’s the strange thing about longevity. You usually don’t notice it while it’s happening. It builds one client, one animal and one year at a time, until eventually the business has become part of local memory.

The next chapter

Mike jokes that reaching the clinic’s 100-year milestone is now Ben’s responsibility. It’s said lightly, but it also tells you something about how the family thinks about time.

Family businesses like this are not built for the moment they’re in. They are built to remain useful.

Dusty opened the doors in 1952. Mike grew up around the practice and later worked alongside him. Ben grew up watching Mike do the same. Now the third generation is carrying it forward.

The tools are different. The medicine is different. The town is different too.

But the reason people still call Rhodes is not complicated.

They trust them with something they care about.

And after more than 70 years, that may be the most important thing a local business can earn.

Rhodes Veterinary Clinic is not just part of Colac’s history. It is still working in it every day.

That is why it is worth knowing.