Hey, Thoughty2 here.
Australia is home to some truly nightmarish creations.
And no, I don’t mean Neighbours, which has inexplicably been on British TV for over thirty
years.
I’m talking about wildlife.
The kind you can only find in the land down under; snakes that can kill you in an instant,
spiders the size of your head, and a variety of other creatures that would rip out your
intestines and eat your face as soon as you look at it.
With that in mind, you’d think that if the Australian Government ever decided to declare
all-out war on one of the creatures that roam their beautiful land, it would be on something
venomous, carnivorous, or at the very least mildly bad tempered.
But no.
In perhaps the greatest version of “man versus beast” ever recorded, the Aussies
went after the Emu.
The ensuing struggle was so bloody it is today known as the Great Emu war of 1932.
And no, I’m not making that up.
But you can see why the government would want to go to town on these fearsome creatures,
can’t you?
Just look at them!
The baleful, dead eyes, the small-but-probably-very-deadly beak, the stubby legs that could quite happily
kick your elderly grandmother to death ... but actually, the reasons for wanting to commit
mass “emucide” were a bit more complicated than that.
After World War One, the government decided to give their discharged veterans some land
in Western Australia so they could live out their days as farmers, have a bit of peace
and quiet, and try to forget all about the horrors of war.
It sounded good on paper, but in reality, it didn’t quite turn out to be the utopia
the veterans had expected.
The land was unfertile and the farming hard, backbreaking work.
And then the Great Depression arrived in 1929 to make things even worse.
Wheat prices fell precipitously, the government failed to follow through on promised subsidies
for farmers, and then, in 1932, just to add insult to injury, the emus turned up.
Twenty thousand of them.
And what was worse, they were hungry for the sweet taste of man-flesh… well OK wheat.
But still - they were hungry, you could say they were peckish.
Mind you, this wasn’t the first time the emus had made themselves known.
Far from it.
Up until 1922, emus had been a protected species, but they were soon reclassified as “vermin”
after it became clear they had no respect for social etiquette.
Emus, you see, don’t have a firm grasp on the concept of farming.
Through the eyes of an emu, a farm is basically a very convenient kind of all you can eat
buffet.
But farming in Western Australia is hard enough as it is, so when a horde of weird-looking
birds come along to joyfully munch through the literal fruits of your labour, you aren’t
going to take it lying down.
In 1923, a bounty system was introduced offering cash for every emu killed.
It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it probably would have worked pretty well
if it hadn’t been for the numbers.
These ex-military farmers were all well trained with a rifle, of course, but even with all
their human-killing expertise, they were unable to slow the wave of feathered enemies heading
towards them across “no man’s land” - they simply didn’t have enough ammo.
By the time 1932 rolled around, it had become abundantly clear that unless somebody invented
a bomb that specifically vaporised emus, the farmers were going to need more guns.
Specifically of the large, fully automatic variety.
Soon enough, several of these ex-soldiers were knocking on Minister of Defence Sir George
Pearce’s door asking for more firepower: feather penetrating rounds, beak-seeking missiles,
and of course - a lot more emunition…...
OK, so they didn’t ask for any of those things.
For reasons I can’t explain, they appear to have had almost no interest whatsoever
in puns.
But they did ask for machine guns with which to battle their emu opponents.
And amazingly, the government agreed, not only providing the weapons in the form of
two lewis guns, but also sending in the army to wield them.
The transport of fresh soldiers was paid for by the Western Australian Government, and
the farmers provided food, accommodation, and paid for the ammunition.
It was probably overkill, but as far as Pearce was concerned, the birds would provide good
target practice for his men, and their feathers could be used to make hats for the Light Horsemen.
After all, if you’re killing thousands of birds with two machine guns, you might as
well kill two birds with one stone while you’re at it.
The operation was led by Major G.P.W Meredith of the Seventh Heavy Battery of the Royal
Australian Artillery, and if the amount of syllables in a person’s title are an indication
of their emu-murdering capabilities then he was certainly the man for the job.
In October 1932, he took two soldiers from his battery – along with two Lewis guns
and ten thousand rounds of ammunition – and headed off to assist the farmers.
During the first day, however, the “war” was called off by rain, which admittedly makes
it sound more like a tennis match at Wimbledon than a serious military campaign.
You couldn't imagine Hitler saying 'hold on lads, our Panzers are getting damp, let's
invade Poland tomorrow'.
Anyway, this unexpected downpour made the enemy scatter, which was a significant problem,
because when you’re trying to fire a barrage of machine gun bullets into a crowd of emus,
you really don’t want them to start valuing their personal space.
But by the second of November, hostilities had resumed once more.
It was at this point Meredith and his men attempted to herd about fifty emus into a
small area to make sure they were in range of the guns.
But the emus appeared to cotton onto this plan, and responded by employing their own
version of“guerrilla tactics”, scattering into smaller units so they were difficult
to target en mass.
Even so, a stubby little beak versus a machine gun isn’t exactly a fair fight, and sadly,
quite a few valiant birds lost their lives that day.
But it took so many bullets to do the job that questions began to be asked as to whether
the whole ‘machine gun the emus’ thing was economically viable.
Maybe “financial warfare” was part of the emus’ battle plan all along… although
they’ve never been known for their accountancy skills.
Either way, Meredith had obviously vastly underestimated the enemy.
Not only were they becoming increasingly difficult to hit, but when his men did manage to shoot
one, most of the time the birds seemed to just take it in their stride.
So much so that it was taking an average of ten bullets to bring down a single emu, although
admittedly most of those shots missed their mark in the first place.
Major Meredith later said: “If we had a military with the bullet-carrying capacity
of these birds, it would face any army in the world.
They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks” … and if that’s true, why
were we still using tanks in World War Two?
Shouldn’t the Allies have ditched the armoured vehicles and ridden into Berlin on emus instead?
The war of man versus feathery beast continued, but frankly, by this point it was a comedy
of errors.
The next thing Meredith did was to set up an ambush near a local dam, and on the fourth
of November, over a thousand emus were spotted heading towards it.
Everything was going swimmingly.
All they had to do was wait until those “beaky bastards” were close enough and open fire.
But as the birds finally got within range, the lewis guns jammed, and only twelve emus
were killed, while the rest legged it.
Yet another day in the Great Emu War of 1932 was over without much to write home about.
Meredith was clearly struggling to match wits with his emu equivalent.
And as crazy as it may sound, it really did seem like the enemy were operating under orders.
In fact, several days into the war, observers noted that each pack of emus appeared to have
its own general; a big guy, about six foot high, with black feathers, who called the
shots, and kept watch while the other emus helped themselves to crops.
And is it just me, or do you imagine him wearing a battle-scarred helmet on his tiny head,
cigar clamped tightly in his beak, and saying things like: “I love the smell of napalm
in the morning”?
No?
Just me then.
Out of frustration, or maybe pure desperation, the army mounted one of the Lewis guns on
a truck and tried to mow the emus down that way.
The emus, however, were like Usain Bolt on speed.
Not only that, but the ride was so bumpy the gunner in the back was unable to fire off
any shots.
At one point, a particularly brave “kamikaze” emu managed to get his corpse caught in the
truck’s steering equipment, causing the driver to steer into a somebody’s fence,
which promptly disintegrated … and in Western Australia, fences were pretty damn important
… which was another reason Emus had to be sacrificed on the altar of agriculture.
You see, Emus not only destroyed the crops, they also left gaps in fences where rabbits
could get through.
“So what?”
I hear you ask.
“What’s the big deal about a few cute, fluffy bunnies?”
Well, rabbits are a very big deal in Oz, hence the “Rabbit Proof Fence” which runs for
1,700 kilometres across Western Australia.
They’re a significant factor in species loss, and have a huge impact on both natural
resources and crops due to the fact they graze like a fat man at a wedding.
Mind you, the Rabbit Fence hasn’t done a fantastic job of bunny-massacring, because
they’re still a problem.
In the 1950s, the myxoma virus – which causes myxomatosis -- was deliberately introduced
into the rabbit population in Australia.
This cut down numbers for a while, but the rabbits have since developed immunity, allowing
them to keep on breeding like ... well, like rabbits.
Could the Great Rabbit War be next?
Only time will tell.
By the eighth of November, 1932, two-thousand-five-hundred shots had been fired in the Great Emu War
- all of them by the human side, I should add.
But the number of emus killed was only in the hundreds, with some claiming it was as
low as fifty.
Still, it wasn’t all doom and gloom, because Meredith made a note in his official report
-- sounding particularly proud of himself -- that not one of his men had been injured
during the battle.
Which is a miracle when you think about it.
I mean, these poor men were left to face a mass of placid, flightless birds all on their
own with nothing but machine guns to defend themselves.
It’s a miracle any of those boys got out alive.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was also around this point Meredith started losing the support
of the local media.
They were making quite a big deal of the fact that “only a few emus were dying”, especially
given the Rambo-esque levels of firepower being brought to bear.
It also didn’t help that serious questions were being asked in parliament.
For example, when one politician suggested medals should be awarded to those brave soldiers
taking part in the emu war, a member of the opposition said the medals should be given
to the emus, as they’d “won every round so far”.
If the agricultural ramifications hadn’t been so serious, Meredith and his men could
easily have become a laughing stock.
Defence Minister George Pearce, who had agreed to the whole thing in the first place, was
even given the unofficial title “Minister for the Emu War,” which could hardly have
been a feather in the cap of his military career … Still, he kept on defending the
operation, and with support from the Premier of Western Australia it was agreed battle
would recommence.
On the thirteenth of November bullets were flying again, and by the second of December
the military were killing around a hundred emus per week.
That was definitely an improvement, but it was hardly putting a dent in the mass ranks
of emus, and by 1934, the higher-ups in government were clearly at the end of their feather - I
mean tether.
I’ll stop now I promise.
The bounty system was reintroduced, and the farmers were given enough ammunition to take
care of the issue themselves.
Which proved to be pretty effective, because over fifty-seven thousand bounties were claimed
in the following six-months.
Mind you, there must still have been a fair few emus knocking around, because in 1943
wheat farmers were concerned enough to request military assistance with the growing emu threat
once again.
And, apparently having learned from the debacle with the lewis guns, this time the farmers
had a better idea - they wanted the army to bring bombs.
Lot’s of bombs.
I’m happy to say the military respectfully declined this invitation.
But the emu problem wasn’t going away, and in 1950 it was raised in federal parliament,
where Army Minister Josiah Francis approved the release of five-hundred-thousand rounds
of ammunition to help with the claiming of bounties.
All told around three-hundred-thousand emus were killed in Western Australia as part of
the Great emu war and the skirmishes that followed.
But who really won The Great Emu War of 1932?
Man?
Or Emu?
It’s true, a lot of emus were sent to meet their beaky maker, and, so far as we know,
not one human combatant died in the line of duty.
But even so, the emus put up a remarkably good fight, considering the circumstances.
These days, the majestic emu appears on the Australian coat of arms … which is more
than you can say for Major G.P.W Meredith.
And in 2020, a video game was released based around the Emu War … but I’ve yet to see
a game set in the Western Australian parliament.
Perhaps the greatest victory of all, however, is that the Emu is still with us, and it’s
thankfully now illegal for anyone to murder them with machine guns, bombs, or anything
else for that matter.
So, maybe that sarcastic politician was right.
Maybe the emus should have been given a medal.
And maybe we should have a day of remembrance for those emus who lost their lives defending
their right to eat their own body weight in wheat.
Maybe we can convince Christopher Nolan to make a movie about it like he did with “Dunkirk”.
I’m sure Tom Hardy would make a fantastic emu.
Thanks for watching.