The adult male has rusty-brown upper parts with streaks of black, the crown more reddish and grey-brown wings.

[3] At least one subspecies is present near the site of the Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex near Port Lincoln, on the Eyre Peninsula of South Australia.

[5] It was described as the "soft-tailed flycatcher", native name mur-re-a-nera when painted between 1788 and 1797 by Thomas Watling, one of a group known collectively as the Port Jackson Painter.

[8] In the first description and illustration of the bird by Major-General Thomas Davies, another Sydney region indigenous name merion binnion was reported, since the tail resembled the "cassowary (emu)" feathers.

[9] The skin of a male southern emu-wren somehow ended up in the collection of Coenraad Jacob Temminck, who believed it to be from Java.