Subjecting our national Coat of Arms to the taste test

I've eaten both sides of the national Coat of Arms, can you guess which was tastier than the other?

The emu.

That might surprise some folk.

I have found kangaroo to be a bit dry for my liking, but an emu steak was something else.

Some years back I had been invited to a field day in central Victoria to promote the worth of a potential new industry into emu farming.

It never really caught on.

Field day participants were invited to try out emu cooked on a barbecue, and if you'd met me, it would be obvious I like my tucker.

I couldn't believe it, not could the photographer I was teamed up with.

It tasted like very lean beef steak.

In fact, I was so sure it was beef steak I swiped one of the bloody pieces of meat before it was cooked.

On the way home we stopped in to a country butcher I knew and asked him to examine it.

Hardly a DNA test I know, but butchers know their stuff.

Nup, he told me, it's not beef.

My only experience with flightless birds had been a dalliance my parents had with ostriches some decades ago.

They had invested into a pyramid-type scheme where the sky-high prices of this unlikely livestock were only sustained on more suckers being convinced to buy into the scheme.

It soon unravelled.

I remember one local wag threatening to sneak onto the ostrich farm and grab his lost investment.

"It will be the most expensive yabby meat ever," he laughed.

Jeff Long at Kerang is still hooked on emu.

With about 10,000 of them on his family farm, he is the biggest emu fan in Australia.

By extension, that makes him the world's biggest emu farmer.

Mr Long is sold on the lifegiving possibilities of emu meat and emu oil in particular.

So much so he has converted the family sheep farm in northern Victoria to grow emus.

The family has also invested heavily in a processing works to prepare his product for sale.

Now he has decided his Longview Emu Farm is ready for sale, so someone else can take the emu baton and run with it.

Today the farm is carrying around 10,000 emus with scope to increase their numbers even more.

Mr Long famously took over his family's grazing farm at Tragowel, south of Kerang, in the late 1980's when the sheep industry was in a downturn, so he looked to emu farming to diversify.

After many years of research the former truckie became convinced emu oil and emu meat can play a vital role in human health and well-being.

The farm business is being sold through an expressions of interest campaign by Elders Real Estate.

It has fully automated hatching and incubation facilities, rendering plant, extensive staff accommodation and secure water via the Goulburn Murray Water supply channel.

Today it is fully integrated poultry enterprise widely renowned for the quality production of premium oil and meat.

The Long's say lucrative supply agreements are in place to service expanding domestic and export markets. About 170 hectares (420 acres) of the 221ha farm is laid out to flood irrigation.

WHAT'S HAPPENING AROUND AUSTRALIA: