Australia’s Most Ridiculous War (And How The Emus Won)

Written By Southpoint Collective

Imagine a war where the enemy couldn't be reasoned with, couldn't be outmaneuvered, and, despite being armed with nothing but beaks and sheer determination, left the Australian military entirely humiliated.

This is the story of the Great Australian Emu War, where machine guns were no match for the world's most stubborn birds.

In the early 1930’s, farmers in Western Australia had been facing some particularly hard times. Many of them were veterans of the First World War who had been given land by the Australian government in order to take up farming. The only problem was, the land they were given wasn’t particularly great.

When the great depression hit in 1929, the government implored these farmers to rather focus on increasing their production of wheat crops, promising them that they would provide subsidies for any loss of income from whatever they were farming before.

The farmers agreed, seeing it as another form of national responsibility, and duly made the switch. However, just a few short years later, the market had unsurprisingly become flooded with an abundance of wheat, causing the prices to plummet. The farmers, making less and less on each sale, at least knew that the government would be subsiding their efforts and so they weren’t overly concerned. That is, until the government failed to deliver on its promises.

The farmers were understandably furious at this, but looked ahead to the coming seasons harvest as a means by which to potentially recoup some of their losses.

As the harvest time finally drew near, the farmer's worst nightmare came to life.

Without warning and with no means of preventing it from happening, 20 000 emus began migrating across the very farmlands these crops were growing on. This is not an unusual thing for emus to do, as they generally head to the coast for the breeding season before heading back inland again.

What they discovered on this particular occasion was that these farms provided exactly what they needed for the journey. There was quite obviously an abundance of very edible crops for them to enjoy, but crucially, one of the major advantages the farms in that region offered them, were the many man-made watering holes designed to sustain the local livestock.

The emus descended upon these farms like a biblical swarm of locusts, devouring or destroying absolutely everything in their path. Not only this, but the measly rabbit fences that had been erected were also smashed to pieces, leaving enormous gaps through which the rabbits could swarm through and finish the job.

Up until just 10 years prior to this event, emus had been classified as a protective species in the region, but with their numbers swelling to unmanageable proportions, they were eventually reclassified as vermin.

Knowing this, the farmers began imploring the minister of defence, Sir George Pearce to either send help, or send machine guns.The military veterans turned farmers knew all to well the effectiveness of these weapons and were prepared to take on the problem themselves. Sir George Pearce wasn’t quite so happy to just go handing out military grade weapons to non-serving personnel. But he wasn’t going to just leave them high and dry, either. He approved the deployment of a regiment of soldiers, themselves equipped with the high powered weaponry on condition that the local Western Australian government footed the bill for the transportation required to get them there, as well as the costs involved with supplying them with ammunition. The farmers, who were so desperate to have them deployed as soon as possible, were saddled with the responsibility of making sure that all of the soldiers food and accommodation were taken care of while they were there.

All was agreed and Sir George Pearce signed off on the plan saying “At the very least, it will make for some good target practice.”

The soldiers were moved out and the emu extermination was set to begin in October of 1932. Equipped with two enormous Lewis Machine Guns and 10 000 rounds of ammunition, they were ready to rain down unholy fire on these feathered pests.

Except that just as they were about to get started, an enormous rainstorm blew across the region, cutting visibility and turning the roads to pure mud. The operation would already have to be postponed before it had even begun. A omen one might think to warn them against trying.

By the 2nd of November the rains had ceased long enough to for the troops to finally put their plan into action. Each soldier was tasked with collecting 100 emu skins each so that the feathers could be returned to military HQ to make hats for the army’s light horse brigade.

They loaded up the guns and set off for the town of Campion where a large group of Emus had been spotted. Unfortunately for the soldiers, another consequence of the incessant rains was that it had caused the once singular flock of emus to spread out further apart from one another across the plains.

Upon arriving at the town, the soldiers spotted a group of 50 birds who were standing just outside the range of their guns. They knew if they charged them the birds would outpace them and all would be lost, so they enlisted the help of some local townsfolk into a plan of attack. The locals would attempt to herd the emus into a confined gully whereby the soldiers would ambush them, mowing them down with the machine guns.

The plan sounded great and the townsfolk were on board. They took up their positions and charged at the emus from behind attempting to force them towards the gully. The emus, however, had another idea entirely. As soon as they spotted the locals doing their very best sheepdog impressions, they simply split up into dozens of smaller groups and ran in every direction imaginable except towards the ambush site. Who would have thought that emu’s wouldn’t follow the battle plans?

The soldiers, seeing the chaos unfolding, decided to try their luck and fired towards some of the fleeing birds. Between poor aim and too great of a distance, the bullets simply struck dirt. They waited for a group of the emus to venture a bit too close to them, and when some did they opened fire again. This time they managed to strike a few of them, but nowhere close to enough to call the day a success. On their way back from the town that day they came across a stray flock and opened fire once more, recording 12 more birds killed.

Two days later, the soldiers, under the command of Major Meredith of the Royal Australian Heavy Artillery, decided that they were not ready quite yet to give up on the idea of ambushing the birds.

This time they had spotted more than 1000 emus heading towards a local dam, they suspected, on a mission to find some water. The soldiers raced ahead of them and spent a fair amount of time finding the perfect hiding spots from where to annihilate the oncoming horde.  As luck would have it the birds arrived at the dam en masse. They weren’t going to make the same mistake as last time though and so the gunner stationed nearest to them waited until they were well inside the guns range before opening fire. The emus, thirsty from their travels jostled for position at the waters edge, when all of a sudden a sound like a 1000 angry hornets buzzed through the air all around them. The gunner had opened fire and as he found his aim he watched a few birds fall before him, until all of sudden, just as quickly as it had all started, it once again fell silent. The machine gun had jammed. It’s like lining up the perfect shot in a video game, only to have your controller suddenly disconnect.

This gave the emus enough time to scatter before fleeing the area entirely before any more of them could be shot. Once the dust had settled, the bodies of just 12 more emus were found next to the dam.

For the next few days not a single emu was sighted and so the army decided to move further south in search of them.

The army scouts observed a number of scattered flocks and noted that they seemed to have formed their own social hierarchies, each with their own distinctive leader, generally a large male standing over 6 feet tall, with dark black plumage. What made this especially frustrating is that it seems word had spread amongst the emu community, as these leaders made sure to keep watch while their mates carried out their mission of destruction, and would hastily warn them if any kind of danger was approaching.

This meant that the soldiers could never get close enough to them to use their guns before a cry from the leader would go up and the entire group would take off running.

Eventually Major Meredith had had enough and decided that the only feasible method of hunting them down would have to be chasing them. With this in mind he ordered his men to mount one of the machine guns on the back of a truck and when they came upon a flock of these unfathomably agile birds they would simply pull up alongside them and dispatch them one by one.

The men, eager to test out this new mobile attack vehicle set off on the hunt. 

6 full days later Major Meredith submitted an official report that stated his men had suffered no casualties, except for their own dignity.

You see, despite their best efforts, they had underestimated just how fast an emu really is when in a full sprint. Pushing the truck to its absolute limits meant that even on the occasions where they looked like they might stand a chance of gaining on the emus, the rough terrain caused the truck to bounce around so much that the gunner on the back was unable to keep his aim straight or fire off any shots. Nevertheless, they did try, and after 2500 rounds of ammunition had been dispatched across those 6 days, the best estimates were that they had only managed to kill about 50 of the birds. At this point, the emu’s were not just winning the war, they were actively trolling the soldiers while doing it.

Word of this catastrophic failure made its way back to Sir George Pearce and once the local papers picked it up, the embarrassment was palpable. Pearce immediately withdrew both the troops and their guns and ordered them to return back to their base.

The emus, now free of their tormentors, celebrated their victory in style, doubling down their attacks on the local farmers' crops. It almost felt personal.

The farmers tried the best they could to fend off the invaders, but once again the sheer numbers were simply too overwhelming to deal with. Once again, they sent word to the local government, where the James Mitchell, the premier of Western Australia took up their cause and lent his support to their bid for renewed military intervention.

Reluctantly, Sir George Pearce agree to send the soldiers back once again, hoping that in the interim period they had had time to reflect on their mistakes and come back for round two, ready to do some damage.

Initially the Ministry of Defence, trying to find some sort of middle ground, offered to simply send the machine guns back to the region, but when they couldn’t find anyone experienced in their operation, they were forced to once again call on Major Meredith and his soldiers to take up the fight.

The Major was determined not to be embarrassed again initially it looked like maybe their luck was changing. Over the first 2 days, they managed to cull approximately 40 more emus, and as they became more aware of the emus patterns of evasion, got better cutting them off. Within a month they were reporting 100 emu kills a week, but once again, just as before, the momentum shifted and all of a sudden they couldn’t lay a glove on the feathery missiles as they screamed off into the distance. By the 10th of December the soldiers had given up entirely in his official report the tired and defeated Major Meredith claimed that all-in-all, across the two campaigns they had killed 986 having used just under 10 000 rounds of ammunition.

And while that is not a number to be sniffed at, it really didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the 20 000 birds marauding across Western Australia.

Two years later, a bounty system was put in place which offered to pay a cash reward for anyone delivering proof that they had killed an emu.

Interestingly, knowing how difficult the army had found it to kill significant numbers and from a flock of just 20 000 birds, somehow within the first six months of this bounty program nearly 60 000 bounties were claimed. Far be it from me to, cough cough, cry “fowl”, but something doesn’t quite add up there.

Nevertheless, the rampant emu hordes continued their migratory path of destruction each year until someone had the bright idea to simply erect some sturdier fences. And while this didn’t necessarily solve the problem in its entirety, it made enough of a difference that the farmers were able to get back to growing their crops in relative peace.

And so, the Great Australian Emu War stands as one of the most unusual conflicts in military history - a war where the enemy had no battle plan or weapons, and yet still emerged victorious. It’s a story that sounds too absurd to be true, but it serves as a reminder that sometimes, nature simply refuses to be conquered. Whether you see it as a military blunder, a bizarre ecological lesson, or just one of history’s strangest wars, one thing is certain that while brute force isn’t always the answer. Sometimes, the best strategy is just… building a fence.

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