Toby and the Backpack Emus

By Pam Harvey

Ten year old Toby helps his grandfather on his emu farm, but the business is going badly. No-one wants to buy emus any more, especially not the tiny ones the farm is producing that are no bigger than chickens. In a desperate attempt to save the farm, Toby starts an animal photography business, selling pictures of the little emus. The family is in big trouble when just the right person buys a photo of Midget, Toby's pet, and then wants to buy an emu for a very special purpose. Who would have thought an emu could be so glamorous?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pam Harvey
• Release date: Oct 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9780648477600

Pam Harvey

Pam Harvey lives in Bendigo with her husband and two children. Pam works as a physiotherapist and a TAFE teacher and has been writing since 1993.  

Book preview

1

Welcome to Taylor

We were all chasing the emu, so it wasn’t only my fault. We wanted to help it, not hurt it. We were going to put it back in the paddock it had escaped from. If the emu had been wet with sweat or yelling ‘stop, stop’ I guess we would've left it alone. But emus don't do any of those things, and I should know, so we kept running.

It reached the tennis courts and flung itself in the doorway. Its huge feet scraped on the asphalt and I heard Lee behind me say, ‘It's going to rip the surface up.’

I ran faster. I was in front of the others, and suddenly there was only me and the emu.

In the background, kids were hollering ‘Go, Thommo!’ and ‘Get it, Toby!’ I heard the blare of the P.A. system but couldn’t catch what was being said. No-one was taking any notice. Along the fence, kids lined up clutching the wire and Peter was waving the sock he'd taken off to stick over the bird's head. The emu and I were doing laps. As I went past the fence line again, I saw Peter's one bare foot with his toes gripping the wire like he was going to climb up and over.

The bird was slowing down. I was so close. A noise like a cracked exhaust was coming from it and I realized it was really panting. Its breathing was all over the place, sounding sick. It stopped and sat; its great hocks clonking on the ground. I only had to take one step to grab it around the body, holding its wings as I'd done hundreds of times to the emus at home. I hugged it. It collapsed.

I was still holding it, waiting for its wind burst energy to come back when Mr. Tweed stormed over. He shook me off it - grabbed my shoulders and shook until I sat back on the ground with a noise a bit like the emu’s - and took a good look at the bird's head.

‘You idiot,’ he said, glaring around at me. ‘It's dead.’

---

Well, it wasn’t. Mr Tweed wouldn’t know a thing about emus. Pop came to collect it and we nursed it back to health. In the meantime, though, I got branded as an emu-killer.

You might be thinking that it’s pretty unusual to have emus in a paddock next to your school. It might be unusual in the city, but in Marshall (that’s our town) it was normal. If there weren’t emus in the paddocks, there could be alpacas or llamas or ostriches. Sometimes normal things like Hereford cattle or pony club horses ate the grass, but that was so different that you had to look twice to check they weren’t camels in disguise.

Hardly anyone lives in Marshall itself, most people are out on small blocks. Marshall has a school (all the years up to Year 12 – what they call a Consolidated School), a hospital, and a whole heap of shops. Just not many houses. Only old people who are retired, and school teachers, live in Marshall. The rest of us always say we live in Taylor, because Taylor's the name of our district. Taylor used to basically be a dry farming area, with its fair share of cattle, sheep, and a bit of wheat growing further out even though we are near the river. It has changed, though, especially when people get small runs of water during the summer. Pop says Taylor’s full of ‘alternatives’ - small farms with weird things on them.

The Connors have the most llamas, but there are others around, too. Alpacas are pretty common. There’s only one farm of vicunas. Driving around you see paddocks full of deer, Highland cattle, damaras, and emus (of course). Then there are ostriches, a few camels, and loads of yabby dams. Miniature dairy cows and miniature Herefords are fairly new, but the miniature ponies have been in the paddock near the milk bar for years.

Some farms grow water chestnuts or organic cherries. The place behind us has tea-tree plantations. Others grow hydroponic tomatoes, Mexican corn, and gourds. I don't know why Taylor has a big variety of stuff around. Pop says it’s because we are in the middle. Melbourne’s to the south and the true dry farming areas are in the north. People from the city want to try out their hippie dreams, and people from the old-fashioned farms are sick of trying to make money out of traditional things.

We are ‘alternatives’ too. Well, sort of. When dad died, and Mum, Robert and me moved in with him, Pop’s interest in emu farming began. It was all the rage then. I think he wanted to get out of truck driving as soon as he could, because his great big truck parked in the yard every night only reminded everyone of what had happened to Dad.

Pop did a lot of fencing, and built a shed for emu feed. He also spent a lot of time reading ‘Emu Breeding in America’ magazines. He found out all sorts of weird things about emus, and what people did with them. There are a lot of emu farms in America. People use their eggs for making things (like egg-shaped stage coaches with little gold trimmings and tiny doors to open), they use emu fat to make emu oil, and they eat emu meat. They use every bit of the emu except the feathers. Too scratchy, I guess.

Pop was convinced that emu farming would take off in Australia, just like ostrich farming seemed to be. All the rich people were farming ostriches. Ostriches cost one hundred times the cost of emus, and they aren’t as friendly. Pop wanted emus, so he got them. He didn’t talk about what he was going to do with them. I think he wanted to sell them as breeding pairs to other farmers. He was a bit like me, I could eat emu if I didn’t know the emu I was eating. It’s like eating any sort of meat only probably healthier because emus belong in Australia, not like cattle and sheep.

Other Australians, however, didn’t like it. Emu eggs for painting were one thing; but emu meat for eating was another. The newspapers were very interested in the talk about emus being slaughtered in special abattoirs. ‘Eating our Native Animals!’ was one headline. Then everything went crazy. It seemed like the whole of Australia was against eating emus. Not one of the promised abattoirs was ever built. Someone built two mobile ones, but it would take a long time for them to get around all the towns in Australia that had emu farms. So, Pop’s emus kept sitting in the paddock making no money - and Pop kept working. Mum and I started to worry about him. Maybe he should’ve got into alpacas in the first place.

2

Disregard