The Untold Story of Australia's Defeat: The Great EMU War

The Great Emu War

In 1932, Australia kicked off a bizarre war, not against any country or group, but against a mute bird known as the emu. This feathered creature had given the Australian military a run for their money. It sounds pretty strange that a bird could cause such a fuss that a whole military operation would be launched against it, but Australia actually did that—and ended up losing badly. Welcome back to the blog, folks! After World War One, the whole world...

Economic Hardship and Farmer Revolt

Australia was going through the Great Depression, and farmers weren't able to grow anything on their fields because the prices were so low due to the gap between demand and supply that they couldn't even cover their costs. If this kept up, Australia wouldn't have enough food for itself. To tackle this issue, the Australian government pressured farmers to start producing wheat, promising them that they would buy it at good prices.

They agreed to the terms and started the wheat production, but when the crops were ready, the government went back on its promises and started offering the farmers lower prices. The farmers decided to protest and said they wouldn’t sell the wheat at all, so they didn’t even harvest the crops. It wasn't that the Australian government didn’t need the wheat; they were basically trying to blackmail the farmers because they knew that if the farmers didn’t sell their crops to the government, the crops would get infested.

The Emu Invasion

Who knew that the upcoming trouble would be even worse than getting bitten by a bug? These mice, which are only found in Australia, just finished their breeding season. This was a serious issue because they migrate after breeding. As they were making their way from the inland areas to the coast, they came across some ready wheat fields in Western Australia. A group of 20,000 of them invaded those fields and started destroying them overnight. This bird, which is 55 feet long and weighs 45 kg, can eat up to 2 kilograms of food in a single day.

"Now, they can eat up to 20,000 images, which is a huge number, and in just one day, they could destroy 20 to 25 acres of wheat. For a week or two, farmers were struggling with them, and by now, around 300 to 350 acres of land had been wasted. This issue was getting serious. When the government realized what was happening, they quickly took action and started considering how to get rid of the emus. In their view, there was only one rapid solution: a military operation. Yes, the Australian government told the military to launch an operation against them. It was quite a strange situation."

The Emu War Begins: Initial Setbacks

There was an operation that the media dubbed the Great Emu War. The Australian military, fresh off World War II, thought that after defeating their real enemies, dealing with a few emus would be a walk in the park. They sent a handful of soldiers armed with machine guns and a few thousand rounds to Western Australia, thinking it would be easy. But just as the operation was set to kick off, heavy rains started pouring down in Western Australia. The emus scattered over a vast area, making it tough to target them.

The attack on the emus was postponed for a whole month. On November 2, 1932, soldiers got a report that a few emus had been spotted in a well-known village called Campion. By the time the soldiers got there, the locals had started throwing stones to scare the emus away, causing them to scatter instead of gathering in one place. Just so you know, emus have really strong legs and can surprisingly run at speeds of up to 70 km/h. Anyway, the soldiers ended up opening fire under those conditions, and in total, they only managed to take down about five to seven emus.

She got killed, and the rest just vanished in the fields like stars in the sky during the day. The first attack had failed miserably—out of 20,000, only five or seven died. That was the first setback of this military operation. A couple of days later, the soldiers decided to lay in wait in the fields, ready to ambush when the enemy got close, and then open fire. This time, about a thousand of the enemy entered the fields. When they got near the hidden soldiers, they opened fire. But this time, luck wasn’t on their side. Just as about two dozen of the enemy were down, the machine gun jammed.

Before the machine gun could be fixed, all the ammo vanished back into the fields. The second military operation ended in another embarrassing failure. For the third attempt, the soldiers decided to head south from Campion, where there was a larger presence of the enemy. If the soldiers were going to find any success, it would be here. But this time, they noticed something really interesting about the enemy; they saw that they were divided into different groups, and each group had a leader who was kind of keeping an eye on things while the rest were busy looting the fields.

I was busy, but that leader kept his eyes on the approaching danger. As soon as he got wind of the soldiers arriving, he would hustle all those IMs (militants) out of there. The soldiers were getting worn out chasing them; this battle against the IMs was taking a toll on them. As it goes in wars, when the enemy isn’t easily manageable, you have to change your strategy. So, the Australian military decided to switch things up to teach the IMs a lesson. They came up with a plan to set up a machine gun behind a vehicle.

They'll charge into the emu flock and then fire at them from a moving car. But what they were thinking might work in a real battle doesn’t really apply here, because the enemy, although not flying, is a pretty clever bird. Since the car had to drive fast over rough fields, it was tough to aim the machine gun at the running emus. After firing several rounds, only one or two would actually hit the target. Still, the soldiers stuck to this strategy, but with the car speeding off-road, hitting a running emu was quite the challenge.

The car got stuck in the steering, which caused it to crash into the bushes. During this attempt, 2000 rounds were fired, but only 200 hits were scored. The fourth attack and the new strategy also failed. The operation was paused for a bit, but a few weeks later, they restarted it. This time, the attack was somewhat successful. Overall, the soldiers managed to take down around 1000 targets, but that means they fired 10 rounds to hit just one emu after a total of 10,000 rounds. When you think about it, it’s pretty wild in Australia.

The Aftermath: Defeat and Controversy

In Parliament, politicians raised a lot of objections about the military's performance. They argued that if anyone deserved a medal for this performance, it should go to the emus, which cleverly dodged nine out of ten bullets. Despite all the expenses, only 1,000 out of 20,000 were actually hit. Back then, about 00 lars were spent on this operation, which is over $ million today. It was a pretty embarrassing defeat for the Australian military, and they ended up calling off the operation. So, the emus had won that battle.

As time passed, the emu population kept growing, and every year farmers were facing huge losses. The Australian government came up with a new strategy this time. They distributed thousands of weapons to farmers and set up bounties, meaning the more emus a farmer killed, the more money they would get. This approach actually worked, and after two years, in 1934, 57,000 bounties were claimed in just six months. When this news hit international media, animal rights organizations made a big fuss, and people started criticizing the Australian government.

If the Australian government had acted, they would have had to end the bounty system, which they couldn't control back in 1932 when they had 20,000 emus. Today, the emu population in Australia is around 600,000 to 700,000, and farmers now put up fences around their fields to keep wild animals out, which has become a common practice in Australia. Although farmers don’t face as much danger from wild animals anymore, the battle against emus will always be remembered in history.