Ashgrove QLD

Justin Durkin
B.Optom (UNSW) Grad.Cert. Ocular Therapeutics (QUT)

Justin has a Bachelor of Optometry and Graduate Certificate in Ocular therapeutics. Justin has a keen interest in diagnosing and treating eye disease and can prescribe ocular therapeutics for a range of ocular conditions. Justin has completed the Master’s Module through Australian College of Behavioural Optometry, as well as a Sports Vision certification, including a specialty module in prescribing shooting glasses. On top of this, Justin is the Chairman of Eyecare Plus Australia, Australia largest branded independent group of optometrists and a busy father to three teenagers.

Jessica Manner
BAppSci (optom) (Hons1)

Jess is a local Ashgrovian who graduated from QUT in 2004 with First Class Honours. She loves the challenge of finding the best possible solutions for her patient’s vision. In her spare time, she enjoys long lunches with friends and spending time with her wonderful husband and two children in Ashgrove.

Anthea Nalder
B.Optom (QUT)

Anthea’s goal is to provide excellent clinical eye care assessments and to ensure our patients achieve the best vision possible with spectacles or contacts. She prides herself on being able to relate to people and ensure that they leave with a full understanding of their vision needs and eye health assessment. Anthea also works at the Vision Eye Institute. When not looking into people’s eyes, she can be found walking her dog or going to the gym.

Sara Black
B.App. Sci (Optom)
MACBO

Sara has been an optometrist since 1992, when she graduated from Q.U.T in Brisbane. She loves life in Toowoomba and has 3 school-aged children, a husband and 2 sausage dogs who keep her busy. Sara is like many of her fellow optometrists and requires vision correction; she loves to mix it up with contact lenses and funky spectacles! In her free time, Sara enjoys reading, travelling, walking her dogs, playing with her kids, trivia nights and experimenting in the kitchen.

Sara has completed her fellowship in behavioural optometry and has now been appointed to the exam board in this field. She completed her Masters in Behavioural Optometry back in 2000. Behavioural optometry involves a holistic approach to assessing vision, where we consider vision as more than the ability to see the bottom line on the eye chart. Vision is a complex sense that guides our actions and helps us to make sense of our environment.

Behavioural optometry embraces vision as our primary learning sense and looks at not only what we can see, but how we process the visual information we take in. Behavioural optometry also looks at our visual efficiency with an intensive battery of visual performance tests. These assess ability to sustain clear near focusing, change focus easily from distance to near, keep our place when we read and point and team our eyes together in an effective way. Vision problems can be greatly improved with appropriate Vision Therapy which is an integral part of our practice.

Sara's special interests are in vision-related learning difficulties, contact lenses and binocular vision. She also assesses and diagnoses eye pathology, using our state of the art equipment including retinal photography and OCT. Please call us or send an email if you'd like any further information on behavioural optometry and vision therapy!