What Was the Emu War?

Following World War II, Australia became embroiled in another war -- with a population of emu. Learn how the Emu War unfolded in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff.
Lauren Vogelbam here with the story of the Emu War.
It begins after World War One, when soldiers returned home
to Australia. The government was eager to show its support
for veterans. Take land. The government said, grow wheat and
we'll pay handsomely for it. It was a mission for

(00:23):
the bright eyed and hopeful, for men eager to cultivate
their futures. As they cultivated the soil in Western Australia,
you could say the plan was flawed from the start.
The government had nine hectares that's two two thousand acres
to go around, but that wasn't enough for the nearly
five thousand veterans who wanted it. Land was doled out
as it became available, and the choicest lots were given

(00:45):
away first. The remaining veterans got land in Perth, which
was not ideal for farming. What's more, in the years
that followed the initial land hand out in the early
nineteen twenties, Western Australia combated drought, frost, and a significant
rabbit infestation. While veterans labored against the elements and the wildlife.
Mounting financial challenges from the Great Depression threatened to undercut

(01:05):
all they'd been promised. The Australian government had initially pledged
to pay the veterans four shillings per bushel of wheat,
but the bill tied to that sum was killed in
the Senate. Another bill proposing three shillings per bushel actually passed,
but the veterans were never paid. At last, in nineteen
thirty one, the Wheat Bounty Act made good on the
government's promise to pay for wheat at the staggeringly low

(01:26):
price of four and a half pence per bushel. Let's
put this in perspective. Pence is equivalent to pennies. A
shilling is twelve pence, and there are twenty shillings in
a pound. In today's market, one British pound is worth
about a buck fifty. So these veterans were being promised
smallish sums of money to start, and delivered way less,
originally promised a fifth of a pound per bushel, and

(01:48):
settling for just one twentieth of a pound per bushel,
ten times less than what was promised. However, by this
point the veterans were desperate to make money. Off of
their wheat crops, and the stage was set for a
modestly fruitful harvest. No one could have anticipated what happened next.
In the annals of history, there's perhaps no stranger of
foe that the Australian emu, a flightless bird that can

(02:10):
stand about six and a half feet that's two meters
tall and way close to a hundred pounds. That's fort
and at an even stranger battle of man with machine
gun versus giant bird. The giant bird one. But in
warfare it's essential to know the enemy. So let's pause
and examine the bird. The dogged the veterans. We spoke

(02:30):
with Eric Slovak, bird keeper at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park.
He said EMUs are solitary for the most part. They
do get together in breeding seasons, but EMUs would prefer
to be by themselves. The exception is when they're foraging.
Slovak likens that behavior to humans going out solo to
a fast food lunch. He said, you're at McDonald's around

(02:50):
lots of people, but you're not socializing. You're just there
for the food. Okay, So they're big, solitary, hungry birds,
not much of a threat right, um, multiply that emu
you're envisioning by twenty thousand. That's how many descended upon
Western Australia in nineteen thirty two. Until a decade earlier,
in mus had been a protected species. After that time,

(03:13):
they were reclassified as vermin. Slovak explained, they'll eat anything
they can get their mouths on without hunting their grazers.
They like nuts and berries, baby grasses, which brings us
back to wheat. Yep, they'll eat that, faced with a
seemingly endless buffet of it. The opportunistic birds homed in
on the veterans plots beaten down by weather at a

(03:34):
volatile financial market, the veterans leaned hard on the government.
Help us, they implored, so one Major GPW. Meredith wound
up leading a military offensive against the EMUs. But there
were a few conditions. The veterans had to foot the
bill for the ammunition. Lewis machine guns were used in
EMU combat, and the veterans had to provide food and
lodging for the men assigned to this curious mission. As

(03:55):
a side note, a cinematographer Fox Movie Tone accompanied the
military to fill the EMU effort. Historians assumed the footage
would have been used in propaganda films to illustrate how
the government was aiding its veterans. But spoiler alert, the
mission didn't go exactly as planned. Armed with the knowledge
that a slingshot can take down an ordinary bird, you
might hazard a guess that a machine gun could wipe

(04:17):
out EMUs easily, but you would be wrong. EMUs are
made to run, and when shot out, they're going to panic,
and they won't move in any reliable direction. And emo's legs,
head and neck move with elegant fluidity while their bodies
stay parallel to the ground. Slovak explained, the body it
looks like a wave. The legs could left, the head
goes to the right, and they run in all different

(04:38):
directions like dropped marbles. Meredith and his men couldn't get
a straight shot at the EMUs, who stayed out of
range of machine guns, even when enterprising veterans suggested putting
them on vehicles and pursuing the birds as they ran.
The military wasted a ton of ammunition. Only two hundred
birds of the twenty thousand were actually killed, and not
only did the EMUs of aid the troops, they destroyed

(05:00):
and more farmland in the process, tearing up the ground
wherever they ran. The veterans were dispirited and their land
was devastated. Meredith had a lot to answer for why
had so much ammunition been wasted? And was the effort
even humane? Then there was the matter of money. The
veterans promised to pay for the ammo, but the mission
ultimately failed. Could the sun be forgiven? This example of

(05:22):
ridiculous history can't be tied up conclusively with a tidy bow,
and some details such as who was ultimately held responsible
for the cost of the ammunition, are unclear. We do
know that the veterans learned painfully from past performance that rifles,
not machine guns, were the best way to handle nuisance EMUs.
They continued their war in a one to one battle
Veteran against bird, and the Australian government later placed a

(05:44):
bounty on EMUs to help control the population. But finally,
we do suspect that the Fox cinematographer got epic b
roll while on location. Today's episode was writen by Candice
Gibson and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a
production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
on this and lots of other ridiculous history. Visit our

(06:06):
home planet has stuff works dot com and for more podcasts.
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