Dr Campbell Costello BVSc

Campbell Costello, or “Cozzy” as he is more usually known, was born and raised on his family’s isolated beef cattle stations in the outback of North Queensland, Australia. Growing up on a few hundred thousand acres of bush with plenty of animals and not many people made choosing a career in veterinary science an easy one, especially if it involved cattle, horses and the frontier. Campbell graduated from James Cook University’s inaugural year of undergraduate Veterinary Science in 2010, and traded the tropical North of Australia for the cold Southern States of Australia for a few years of mixed-animal practice, with a predominant focus on large animals.

In 2012, Campbell decided to ride one thousand kilometers across Mongolia in the world’s longest horse race, the “Mongol Derby”. Cozzy was not only the year’s youngest rider but was just one of 16 out of 34 that finished the race. Cozzy returned to mixed practice in Australia but the banality of life post-derby was too much, so he packed his bags and trekked across the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan in 2013 before relocated to the Highveldt of South Africa as a Large African Game & Wildlife veterinarian. Cozzy returned to Australia to work as a veterinary contractor in the livestock sector that dealt with several overseas governments that were importing breeding animals to establish or improve their pre-existing livestock ventures. This took Cozy to coutnries such as Russia, China, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Kuwait, Oman, Israel, the UAE, and Sri Lanka to name a few. Cozy has also returned to Mongolia annually several times as one of the senior veterinarians and crew for the “Mongol Derby” race, and several weeks prior to select thousands of Mongolian horses for the event. During these deployments, Campbell ventured to Northern Mongolia twice to spend time with the Nomadic Tsaatan Reindeer herders in the Khövsgöl province on the Russian border. Campbell also started working annually as an Airborne Veterinarian for the Iditarod Dog Sled Race in Alaska. In 2016 Campbell was stationed in South-Eastern Kazakhstan as the head veterinarian and farm manager of a Angus Beef Cattle farm and help establish one of the country’s first ever cattle ventures since the demise of the Soviet Union. During that time, Campbell was also one of the only English speaking veterinarians to attend the “World Nomad Games” in Kyrgyzstan and offer veterinary assistance to the local animals and training to local veterinarians and para-veterinarians. During March of 2019 Campbell was very fortunate to be the mounted veterinarian for the “Gaucho Derby” recce mission, which involved riding across the Argentine area of Patagonia for several days, monitoring the local Criollo horses’ physiological parameters as a response to the terrain and conditions, and mapping a basic route for the inaugural “Gaucho Derby” race in 2020.

Campbell was based as a large animal veterinarian in the Kimberley region of Australia for eighteen months but left at the beginning of 2019 after contracting leptospirosis. Campbell has returned to his home state of Queensland and is currently locuming around Australia and the world.