The Emu War

By Axel Kirk

The week of November 10th marks the 91st anniversary since the beginning of The Emu War, a little-known conflict from western Australia. Despite the limited number of people outside of Australia who are aware of this war, it is still one of the most crucial elements of Australian political and economic history.

After the end of the Great War in 1918, thousands of British soldiers from the empire's colonies had returned from the front lines to their homes in India, New Zealand, Canada, and the subject of discussion, Australia. When these soldiers returned, the Australian government relieved many of them from duty and gave them the land and supplies crucial to becoming farmers. While the country had very few natural resources, they could still grow grain in large quantities. 

Meanwhile, in the United States, the stock market crashed and people began to stop buying as much as possible and began selling what they had bought, which led to an economic downturn as people stopped buying property, and banks stopped lending money. Because of this, the government began levying money onto foreign imports, which caused the stock market crash to become a global crisis as the Great Depression began. 

As mentioned previously, Australia had very few natural resources, meaning that the country relied heavily on foreign exports to keep itself sustained. But when the depression hit, their main sellers were gone. The crisis of limited resources was made even worse because as summer ended, the northeastern portion of Australia became colder, and the migratory creatures of the continent began moving back southwest for the winter. 

Emu’s; the soon to be scourge of Australia began trekking back to their homeland, ready to become new agents for chaos.  They are 6 feet tall, weigh up to 70 pounds, and can run up to 30 miles per hour. Much like the wild hogs of the Southern United States, these animals are listed as pest animals. They often migrate to the southwest of Australia during the winter, but unbeknownst to them, when they returned to their homelands they found it ripe with moist, wet farmland. As 20,000 emus crashed through the fences of every property in western Australia, they ate as much grain as possible until they were chased off. The destruction they brought continued to make it nearly impossible to harvest anything left that hadn't been eaten. 

While many people believed that this was an issue that should be handled by wildlife and agriculture experts, the farmers themselves decided to go directly to the military, arguing that the attacks could create a famine if not handled quickly. In October of 1932, the minister of defense Sir George Pierce obliged to the farmer's complaints, proclaiming that machine guns would be effective, quick, and painless. He argued that the propaganda from the ordeal would spark patriotism across the country and was most definitely not animal cruelty. However, right before sending out the infantry, he made the farmers sign an agreement that the government would not take any responsibility if the mission ended in failure.

As the battle began, George Pierce deployed Major Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith, Sergeant S. McMurray, and Gunner J. O’Halloran of the 7th Heavy artillery with two Lewis machine guns and ten thousand rounds of ammunition. The first battle took place in Campion, where roughly 50 emus were spotted by the locals. As the men engaged, the emus began running in every direction, confusing the soldiers with their scatter tactic, who fired off multiple rounds of ammunition without hitting any targets. Their second attempt was met with only slightly more success, as they ambushed the emus in a field, but were only able to gun down “a number of birds.” The military had hired several journalists to document the conflict and turn it into pro-military propaganda.

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

- Dominic Serventy, ornithologist, 1932

An artist’s rendering of the First Battle of Campion. Made by Eli Fox

The second battle began similarly to the first, as the men continued their attempts to kill as many emus as possible. At one point, the major mounted a machine gun on top of a truck donated by a local farmer, and while the major drove Gunner J. O’Halloran was positioned in the back, ordered to shoot as many emus as possible. However, due to the bumpy terrain and the emu's speed, it was nearly impossible to fire any shots and the truck eventually crashed into a tree. As the major continued with his men, their advancement was halted as they attempted to shoot down more emus but only gunned down several, as the emus were able to take multiple gunshots and continue running, with the major remarking “If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds it would face any army in the world .”
The Australian House of Representatives eventually chose to withdraw the troops, as their effectiveness was proven to be questionable, to say the least. One politician even stated that medals should be handed out to the emus, who had proven to be capable of beating the humans in every battle they had attempted. Pierce argued that it had been a successful victory, as the men had managed to kill 1000 emus. He was called out on this, as there had been 20,000 emus when the campaign had begun, and over a hundred thousand rounds of ammunition had been used, meaning they had wasted 100 rounds(200 bullets) of ammunition on each emu, and there were still 19,000 emus still running around western Australia. 
The farmers wanted the military to continue helping them with dealing with the emus, but the mission had been deemed too expensive by the government, who instead chose to create a bounty system as a way of cheaply funding farmers to hunt them without being fined, which continued until the farmers of western Australia chose to use the money they had gained through emu hunting to create better fences, ending the crisis.

Special thanks to Wikipedia and Oversimplified History for their previous research on the war.