Like the Tasmanian Aborigines with whom it had co-existed for thousands of years, the Tasmanian emu suffered a calamiltous fate with the arrival of white man. (Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, State Library of Tasmania) Emu Hill, Emu Heights, Emu Point.Ī watercolour by William Porden Kay depicts emus at Stanley during the 1840s. There are many references to the emu in early colonial records too, with many place names recalling it, eg. Emus featured in stories and songs, and there were many different names for them, including gonanner, ponanner and tooteyer. The indigenous people used a substance called ‘patener’, made from a ground metal mixed with emu fat/oil, to mark their heads and bodies. Feathers were used to decorate inside Aboriginal huts, and served as insulation and floor coverings. The Tasmanian emu was regularly symbolised in Indigenous art, in their ceremonies it was common practice for Tasmanian Aborigines to dance and characterise emus by stretching out one arm to emulate the long neck of the bird. The Tasmanian Indigenous people’s sustainable relationship with the emu also suggests emu population numbers were significant. The external characters used to distinguish it were its whitish instead of a black foreneck and throat and an unfeathered neck.

The Tasmania Emu, after which the river and the bay on which Burnie stands were named, is believed to have been a smaller sub-species of the mainland emu. Like the Tasmanian Tiger, there are no emus in Tasmania any more as it is now extinct.

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