When Australia waged a war against Emus and Lost!

Read Time: 4 minutes

It was 1932 and Western Australia was in chaos because of- Emus!

They traveled inland from the coastal areas and found the newly cleared land for cultivation, an ideal habitat. Thus they began to camp at the Campion region of Western Australia and did quite a number on the crop fields. The farmers settled there, quite a few of whom were veteran military personnel from World War 1, requested government’s back-up and military assistance.

Since the Emu population was large, around 20,000 and these ex-soldiers had seen the potency of machine guns, they included it in their request too.
They were given the requested assistance seeing how agriculture was suffering from the chaos caused by these large, flightless birds. And thus began the Great Emu War of 1932, which essentially went on for well over a month.

THE GREAT EMU WAR

Though it was meant to start in October, the operation to eradicate the nuisance of Emus was delayed for a month, due to bad weather.
On November 2, 1932, it finally commenced. And resulted in a failure! The birds scattered and were too difficult to shoot, both because of the distance and their mobility. In the two ambushes on the same day, around a dozen birds were killed.
Then on November 4, another ambush was set up near a local dam, the target is a group of 1,000 Emus. And though the gunners waited till these birds got a lot closer, the machine gun jammed after firing only a few rounds- a dozen birds were killed.
Now, the Emus, being intelligent life forms, started adapting to the situation too. Major G.P.W. Meredith, who was the one in charge of the operation, noticed that each pack seemed to have their own leaders now –
“…a big black-plumed bird which stands fully six feet high and keeps watch while his mates carry out their work of destruction and warn them of our approach.”
By the time, a week of this great Emu war was up, 2,500 rounds of ammunition had been fired with the uncertain number of birds killed. The official report noted that the military suffered no casualties at the hand of the Emus.

THE SECOND ATTEMPT AND THE RIDICULE

Because of the negative media coverage, the military was initially withdrawn. But since the problem of crop destruction persisted, the operation was once again commenced only 5 days later.
This second attempt was a lot more ‘successful’ than the first one. By the end of the ‘war’ on December 10, around 986 Emus were killed with the use of 9860 rounds of ammunition.
It was also claimed that around 2,500 birds died later of the injuries sustained. The matter had now reached international media and was protested against. Since Emu is a rare bird, native to Australia, the environmental concerns were high.
Later, the policy to deal with Emus was reverted back to the use of ‘fences’ and paid bounties.

THE ‘DEFEAT’

After everything, the farmers asked for military assistance again in the subsequent years but were turned down by the government. It was clear that the method of ‘open firing’ wasn’t as effective. it also invited criticism from the conservationists.
Moreover, the Emu population didn’t really take much damage and continued the rampage. In the words of ornithologist Dominic Serventy-

“The machine-gunners’ dreams of point blank fire into serried masses of Emus were soon dissipated. The Emu command had evidently ordered guerilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of military equipment uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month.”