DianaEmu Eggs not Easter Eggs
March 23rd 2008 22:56
“Mummy, why is Emu called Emu? Are there any emus here?”
The children had fallen in love with Emu, knew every undulation of its winding tracks and dried creek beds. Riding past the old corner shop on their ponies, they imagined the shop was open and selling them lollies. Down they would slip to ‘use the phone’ or collect their ‘mail’, then we had to trek to the ‘station, long demolished, to wait for the train from the city.
Plodding along the back roads on our horses, past derelict houses, neglected farms and former hotels, I told them all about the town Emu used to be, but we never talked about the origin of its name.
Here is what I discovered, woven it into a story for the kids.
It is well documented that on June 30 1836 Major Thomas Livingstone Mitchell, explorer, talented artist and Surveyor General of NSW, climbed what he promptly named Pyramid Hill; using his much-loved binoculars, feasted his eyes upon the open expanse of rich grassland stretching away to the southwest. Having just travelled from the arid Darling region and almost given up hope of finding suitable ‘pastoral’ land, this view excited and impressed him.
Mitchell was by all accounts a vain, pompous and rebellious man, unpopular with his superiors, but nonetheless his ‘discovery’ of such lushness hitherto unfound awarded him some of the fame he felt was his due. Interestingly the Australian landscape interested him not one bit, but if he saw country which could be likened to
England, he viewed it favourably.
1836 was apparently a wet year and sometime in July he and his party travelled by bullock dray across the open scattered plains southeast of St Arnaud, in an area known as Kooreh, also named by Mitchell, and roughly along what is now called Marchment Rd.
Picture now the cavalcade plodding slowly through lightly timbered scrub, red gravelly soil crunching lightly beneath the twenty or so oxen loaded with stores, equipment and a boat they took with them on all trips to navigate rivers; Mitchell and his offsider Staplyton riding slightly in front, glancing keenly around at the terrain and vegetation as they go. Various other men range out on either side of the dray, riding or walking. Mitchell had a gang of convicts, two surveyors and his personal manservant Anthony Brown who accompanied him on every trip. A herd of cattle and a dozen or so pack-horses strung out behind complete the picture.
Recent rains have filled the local creeks, (possibly the Strathfillan) wattle is in early bloom and the soil is moist and fertile looking. A brisk southerly reminds them it is winter but otherwise it is warm and sunny.
Camped that night on the edge of thick scrub near the outcrop known today as The Granite’s, the party of thirty or so men wake the following morning to a day of fog and the promise of more sun. Wood-smoke fills the air as the cooks stoke the fires to bake damper, fry kangaroo steaks and boil billies.
Stapylton has been up earlier than most and, spurred on by the delicious morning mist and crisp air, climbs up amongst the large boulders rocks until he comes to a grassy plain. Through gaps in the fog he catches tantalising glimpses of purple mountains, hills and forest. Like Mitchell, he is relieved they have finally found reasonable country and is aware of a warm glow of satisfaction.
Walking further through the rocks, he disturbs a female emu sitting on her nest of three large eggs. She moves off with the curious swaying walk habitual to this large bird, so common a sight to the English explorer that he scarce gives the bird a second glance. The eggs, however, he scoops up, still warm and carries them awkwardly down the granite outcrop to his camp, now visible through the rising fog.
“Topping morning sir,” Stapylton greets Mitchell. “Splendid piece of countryside.”
“Hmph!” Mitchell, non-committal, has not slept well, having spent the night trying to compose a letter to the Governor of NSW which would both inform and irritate.
“We’ll see. What have you got there? Plovers eggs?”
Triumphantly producing his bounty, Stapylton smoothes his leader into a good mood, for Mitchell is very fond of these large, rubbery delicacies.
Fried for breakfast then consumed enthusiastically by Mitchell, the explorer immediately rises to his feet and, after a swig of his billy tea, announces to the ill-assorted crew, “I hereby name this area ‘Emu’!”
Cheers greet this pronouncement.
The camp then duly breaks up and moves ever westwards to the land Mitchell later enthusiastically calls ‘Australia Felix’, namely the Western District of Victoria.
It is a long time now since the symbolic flightless Australian bird has been seen around the open plains but the name has persisted until this day for the region known as Emu.
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