The year was 1932, the War to End All Wars had ended only 15 years before, and Australia was going into battle once more, this time, against Emus. That’s right, Australia decided to wage war against a bunch of large flightless birds with low intelligence. And the craziest part? The emus won.
The Australian Army consisted of 5,000 war veterans left over from World War I. After the war ended, their careers were mostly over and during the time of peace, the soldiers had nowhere to go. Because of this, in 1920 the Australian government gave the soldiers collectively 90,000 hectares of land and a chunk of money to become wheat farmers. Unfortunately, the land was barely usable, and giving a bunch of soldiers a new profession with no training may not have been the best plan. By 1929, the Great Depression hit hard and wheat prices plummeted.
As if to top all of that off, the farmlands that had been given to the veterans had been completely overrun by 20,000 emu’s looking to breed, eat wheat, and have as much fun as a dumb flightless bird can. The emu’s were ruining crops and consistently broke the fence around the crops specifically to keep rabbits out, which had been the longest fence in the world. In theory, it was much like Trumps wall, but specifically for rabbits.
The farmers were rather displeased with this, and by 1922 they had complained enough about the nuisances like angry soccer moms that they had successfully gotten emus taken off the protected species list. The veterans of course, quickly decided that the best way to deal with the problem would be to shoot as many emus as possible to get them off their land. By 1932, the veterans had realized that they didn’t have the necessary supplies (such as ammo) to kill all the birds. On realizing this, they asked the government for help, who then sent a military team to assist the veterans.
It’s been suggested that this was propaganda to make the people think that the government was doing something to assist the war veterans, but serious or not, there was soon a small group of military men with machine guns and 10,000 rounds of ammo ready to gun down some birds with freakishly small heads and huge eyes.
Upon arriving, the military was soon directed to a popular emu hang out, and heading out, they found a crowd of about 50 emus. Even with the large guns and experienced military men, very few birds were killed. A day or two after the soldiers arrived, they went in search for more emus. They quickly came across a flock of about 1,000 birds.
One of the soldiers, Major G.P.W. Meredith, reported that each group of emu’s had a clear leader who kept watch while the others ate. With the use of machine guns, this may not have meant much for the birds, but after merely a dozen birds out of a thousand were killed, the gun jammed and the emus scattered.
Upon this defeat, a new tactic was tried. The soldiers attempted to shoot the emus from inside of moving trucks, but the moving aspect of the trucks complicated things, and the soldiers were once again foiled. As if to rub salt in the wound, one of the trucks hit an emu which got tangled up so badly enough in the tires that the truck veered off course damaging somebody’s fence in the process.
By the end of the 6th day, twenty-five hundred rounds of ammo had been shot, and very few emus were killed. The Australian Army with all of their supplies and men hadn’t even put a dent in the emu population. A second attempt was much more successful, but still didn’t kill even a fourth of the population. It was reported that nearly 100 emus were being killed per week, but each emu required nearly 10 bullets. The soldiers were quickly recalled, and the veterans were gifted enough ammo to kill a lot of emus. The veterans later asked the army to come back to help them kill more of the emus but were denied.
And thus ended the Great Emu War of Australia, with the emus the reigning victors.
More Info
https://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/history/the-great-australian-emu-war.aspx
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