Sunshine Coast Hinterland Times

Alyson with 3 months-old Sacha

The emu is a bird with style and personality. No doubt that’s why it shares our national emblem along with the kangaroo. However, Hinterland emu farmer Peter Thompson and his wife Allyson avoid making friends with their emus, confirming that there’s no room for emotion in business.
“This is a farm, so I don’t encourage birds to have a personality” Peter says with a laugh. His wife  Allyson agrees. “They are such scatty birds”, she says. “It’s so annoying because they won’t herd like sheep or cows”.
Peter is not your average emu farmer. For one thing, in the laying season he canters around his 50 acre farm each morning on horseback sweeping up the emu eggs with a polocrosse stick. And after 15 years of rearing emus he says he’s now thinking like these crazy birds because he usually knows where to find their camouflaged eggs.
If you think that emus are farmed mainly for their meat, then think again. Mind you, emu is a lean meat with three times the iron content of beef. Cooked correctly, it has a succulent taste which is similar to ostrich and beef.  Peter sells a range of delicious emu meat products including gourmet emu pies, kabana and sausages which are available at the Top of the Range Butchery in Maleny. 
The emu is certainly a ‘cash cow’,  but for its oil, not for its meat.“The most I can get for the meat is $170 a bird from the wholesaler”, explains Peter . “If I turn the fat from the bird into eye cream or lip balm, the value per bird can go up to $17,000 a bird.”
This astonishing difference in value adding lies in the exciting potential  for using emu oil to improve human health. For thousands of years aborigines have used emu oil to alleviate sore muscles and joints, aches and pains. Peter says many people are now taking emu oil internally as an anti-inflammatory mainly for arthritis, but also in some cases for other problems including high blood pressure, cholesterol and triglycerides.
Peter is quick to point out that, “emu oil is NOT snake oil!  It won’t fix everything.  However, as many health problems present as an inflammation, it is quite possible emu oil will help.  And don’t forget the moisturising benefit and the great ability of emu oil to cross the human skin barrier”, he adds.
However it’s remarkable that the health benefits  of emu oil have had limited testing. Until now that is.  Peter says Professor Kerryn Phelps, the well known specialist in integrative health issues is eager to do a clinical trial looking at the effect of emu oil on cholesterol and other blood lipids.
“So, if you’ve got someone like that who can put her name to trial results, well that would be fantastic”, says Peter. “Kerryn is interested because she is looking for alternative remedies to anti-biotics”.
“I hope we can get to the situation where we can say that the fat from that bird is better than that one over there, and so develop an appropriate breeding program. Of course we need to prove that those pharmaceutical qualities are inherited, but we haven’t even got to that stage yet”.
Peter moved from cattle to raising emus on his property near Chinchilla in the early 1990s. He needed to diversify following the worst drought in a century. Also, aborigines at the Cherbourg Emu Farm were looking for more people to come into the industry and Peter could see the value was in the emu fat rather than the meat.
Fifteen years later and now with his wife Allyson and baby boys Rory and Sacha, Peter has  established the Tjuringa Emu Farm at Reesville.  Peter is optimistic that once the unique pharmaceutical benefits of emu oil have been scientifically established, then the Australian emu oil business will take off.  And the industry has a long way to go with only 3 emu farms in Queensland and less than 50 Australia-wide. Peter says there are more emus farmed outside of this country than there are emus running around in Australia. But Australian emus may have a distinct advantage.
“I hope it can be shown that the best anti-inflammatory qualities in the fat are because of the diversity of the genetic variation in our Australian farm birds”, says Peter enthusiastically. “It’s quite possible that many of the emus being farmed in other parts of the world don’t have good quality fat because of a limited gene pool”.
The world is only now becoming aware of the benefits of emus and Peter is passionate about the potential of the industry. But living on the Sunshine Coast Hinterland, Peter has a more down to earth  reason for believing in the future of his emu farm. “I would like to prove you could make more money running emus on this place than subdividing it and selling houses”.

Emu Facts:

In the emu world the male makes the nest and sits on the eggs the female lays.

An emu kicks like a kangaroo,
And you can’t get hurt — if you keep behind.”  A.B. Banjo Patterson

The Emu is Australia’s tallest native bird, reaching 1.6-1.9m when standing erect.

The name ‘emu’ is not an Aboriginal word. It appears to have been derived from an Arabic word for large bird.

Emu calls consist of booming, drumming and grunting. Booming is created in an inflatable neck sac, and can be heard up to 2km away.

For more information on the Emu farm at Reesville, go to http://www.tjuringa.com.au/index.html