When the Australians had finally consolidated on the Pozières Ridge, their offensive was turned to the left, along the ridge itself and towards the rear of Thiepval, the German-held salient that had completely rebutted all efforts of the 1st July and which had now to be taken if the Somme offensive was to resume towards its original objectives. Mouquet Farm was a bastion of that fortress, deeply entrenched and with a mass of interlinking underground shelters and tunnels. The exhausted Australian divisions were eventually pulled off the line on the 5th September. In one month they, and the British divisions on their left, had advanced a mere mile. They had fought into the earthworks of the farm 3 times, each time to be repelled by fresh enemy troops who were fed in. Mouquet Farm, known to the troops variously as 'Moo-cow' or 'Mucky' Farm, eventually fell to the British on 26th September.

The original farm buildings stood where the trees are, to the left of the road, and are famous for a series of aerial photographs showing their sequential obliteration by artillery barrage.