After the horrors of World War I, the Australian Federal Government gave thousands of discharged veterans money, land and the promise of a bright and happy agricultural life in the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia. Life as a farmer wasn’t easy, but at least these veterans had seen the last of the battlefield… or so they thought.
The war was over but followed soon after by the great depression in 1929. Hoping to ease the pressure and literally put bread on the table for Australians, the Federal Government promised subsidies to the new farmers to increase their crop production. Wheat prices began to fall and farmers were left wanting when the subsidies never came. The farmers were screwed. And on top of all of this, they found themselves in a battle with an unexpected adversary, pillaging their wheat and destroying their rabbit fences: the emu.
As if plummeting wheat prices and broken promises weren't enough, the veterans-turned-farmers found themselves neck to ample neck with a literal army of emus. 20,000 birds had descended upon the wheat fields (coincidentally smack bang in the middle of their migration route), wreaking havoc on crop yields and perimeter infrastructure. The solution was, of course, clear to these battle-hardened farmers: Guns. Lots of guns.
The veterans sought help from the Minister of Defence, Sir George Pearce, who was all too happy to provide military assistance to combat the emu invasion. 20,000 emus versus military-trained soldiers armed with machine guns. It would be an easy fight (and good target practice too). Little did they know, they were about to embark on an unprecedented war against a seemingly invincible bird.
Command of the emu war troops was given to Major Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith. Let’s just pause for a moment to acknowledge his outrageous name… Anyway, armed with the Lewis automatic machine guns, the soldiers were rather cocky about their imminent victory. However, the emus proved to be formidable adversaries, scattering at the sound of gunfire and employing sneaky guerrilla tactics. The soldiers quickly realised that emus were not your typical targets – they were bulletproof, cunning, and almost impossible to hit with machine-gun fire.
Apparently, these emus were made of lead. They took bullets like a 90’s action film star, shrugging off even serious injury without breaking stride. Describing the emus in his report, Major Meredith wrote, “If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds, it would face any army in the world… They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks.”
Despite their best efforts, the soldiers faced defeat within a week of the operation, killing only a handful of birds. The farmers/soldiers suffered no casualties. The emus, clever and agile, outmanoeuvred the military's attempts to curb their numbers and the soldiers returned home, guns between their legs, while the emus continued their assault on the wheat crops. The failed military intervention became the subject of ridicule in the Australian House of Representatives.
The soldiers went back for another go, failing miserably yet again, and in the end, the most effective strategy against the emus turned out to be putting a bounty on their heads, Ned Kelly style. Between 1945 and 1960, nearly 285,000 emus were killed in Western Australia. That’s a lot of emu steak on the barbie.
By 1953, the Western Australian government had spent £52,000 on a 215km emu-proof fence, essentially an upgrade of the existing rabbit-proof fence the emu’s had destroyed. This fence is now known as the state barrier fence and runs for more than 1,200km, still playing a critical role in stopping the emus (often by maiming them, trapping them so they die of thirst or get picked off by dingoes. Sigh. Do better Australia.)
As it turns out, the feathered fiasco came to the attention of John Cleese, who intended to make a film out of the ridiculous story in 2022. Unfortunately, this didn’t end up happening, but a group of Australian comedians took up the baton and their film, The Emu War, hit the big screen in October 2023. Go watch the trailer… it’s nothing short of spectacular.
SOURCES:
Looking back: Australia's Emu Wars - Australian Geographic by Jasper Garner Gore October 18, 2016
BBC Earth - The Great Emu War in Western Australia was a... | Facebook
Australia's Emu War spawns feature film, jokes and memes 90 years on - ABC News
Australia Once Lost a War With the Mighty Emu | by Matthew Gault | War Is Boring | Medium
Are Emus Dangerous? (Reasons They Attack + How To Avoid) | Birdfact
Trailer Drops for Monster Fest 2023 Official Selection THE EMU WAR
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[00:00:00] Rod: So they set up the entire two guns and pointed it at a flock of emus. Open fire. The emus immediately scattered into small groups and buggered off in every direction possible.
[00:00:08] Will: Did they get any?
[00:00:08] Rod: Not a lot. So this ruined the glorious plan of mowing them down quickly, conveniently, and en masse. The soldiers said we've got to change our tactics. So they tried to ambush a flock of about a thousand. So they're holding fire until they got close. You know, whites of their eyes.
[00:00:22] Will: How do we ambush emus?
[00:00:23] Rod: You'll be very quiet. So they're holding off, the emus are coming forward, time to fire, one of the guns jams, and only a couple emus were killed.
[00:00:30] Will: Hey, we got a couple.
[00:00:31] Rod: 20, 000, whatever. So it quickly became clear they had wildly underestimated their enemy, and also their own abilities by the sounds of it. Cunning adversaries, the emus proved almost impossible to hit with machine gun fire, and they seemed able to shrug off even serious injury from bullets without breaking stride. If I had a division of men who could carry bullets like that, I would take on any army in the world.
[00:00:50] Will: Here's an idea, enlist the emus in the army. Come and fight for us.
[00:00:54] Rod: We'll give you cash and wheat.
[00:00:56] Will: All the migration routes you can carry.
[00:01:04] Rod: So you're a keen hunter, right? You always have been.
[00:01:06] Will: No.
[00:01:06] Rod: I thought so. Me too. You shouldn't have any trouble answering this question with your hunting experience. What are the hardest animals to kill with a gun? What do you reckon?
[00:01:14] Will: Like a guppy, really small fish. They move quickly. Slippery. The bullets will just slide past them. Bacteria. Yes.
[00:01:20] Rod: Not an animal. Things like elephants. Right? 'cause they're huge and thick.
[00:01:23] Will: Yeah. They would be, that would be hard to kill with a gun.
[00:01:25] Rod: Hippos. Probably rhinos too. Thick and hefty. Sea elephants. Same reason. Grizzlies, apparently. Grizzlies have skulls like stainless steel helmets, you know, reinforced with rocks. You can put a lot into a grizzly's head.
[00:01:36] Will: I do love the evolutionary pathway that, that a bunch of animals have gone. It's like, let's really harden the head area so we can use it as a battering ram.
[00:01:44] Rod: And leave the rest squishy. So it's tasty if they do actually get through. Getting down a bit. Armadillos.
[00:01:51] Will: Who is shooting an armadillo? Come on.
[00:01:54] Rod: But armadillos are made out of a tank, right?
[00:01:56] Will: Yeah, I get it.
[00:01:57] Rod: Less expected. Sea sponges because no central organs, you know, you blow bits off them and there's still a sea sponge. Even less expected, for me anyway. If you believe the experience of a bunch of World War I veterans turned into farmers in Western Australia. The hardest animal to kill with a gun might well be the most quintessentially Australian bird in existence.
[00:02:16] Will: Oh my god. Welcome to The Wholesome Show, the podcast that couldn't block the whole of science, with a howitzer.
[00:02:29] Rod: That's a canon for our pacifist listeners.
[00:02:31] Will: Block the whole of science. Oh, like block, like stopper it. I'm Will Grant.
[00:02:35] Rod: I'm Rod Lamberts. So, World War I vets. After World War I, Australian federal government gave thousands of discharged vets money, land and the promise of a bright and shiny new agricultural life in the wheat belt region of Western Australia. Sounds good. Yeah? The land wasn't Always the best land. It was occasionally, let's face it.
[00:02:54] Will: Really shocked. Like we're giving away land for free
[00:02:57] Rod: to people who've never farmed before to grow wheat. And if I've learned anything from the $2 bill
[00:03:02] Will: or anything about Australian history that promises of the fecundity of the agricultural land don't always come about.
[00:03:09] Rod: Yes. So it wasn't always easy for these men. Then the great depression hit 1929. Federal government encouraged these guys to increase their crop, their wheat crops in particular. And the promise of course, was of delicious government subsidies. If it wasn't going as well as it could, the government would offer them some extra cash to make it worthwhile.
[00:03:26] Will: Surely these guys at the time were growing as much as they could. I mean, isn't that the farmer thing? You grow what you can. There's not many situations where farmers are going, I only feel like growing half of what I could. Or you, fruit tree, you don't put any fruit out.
[00:03:39] Rod: Just two branches. Leave the rest just leafy.
[00:03:42] Will: I thought that's what you did. I mean, I ain't no farmer guy.
[00:03:45] Rod: So the feds, the federal government, they basically thought this is a great way to help Australia out of the depression or at least better weather the depression. More wheat, give the farmers more money, et cetera. But in spite of the recommendations and the promise of the subsidies, which it seems weren't so much delivered as not delivered.
[00:04:02] Will: But they got the free land though.
[00:04:04] Rod: They got the land.
[00:04:04] Will: But no subsidies.
[00:04:05] Rod: Well, they got some things. It's not clear how many things, but they didn't get all the things that they were told they would get.
[00:04:11] So despite all that, for some bizarre reason, wheat prices continue to fall. Hard to imagine. Obviously the veteran farmers did the smart thing. They thought profits are falling per, you know, bushel or firkin or whatever you measure wheat in.
[00:04:23] Will: I'm still not stuck on the economics here. Profits are falling per bushel. Let's grow more.
[00:04:28] Rod: That was their smart thing. They went. Harder. Grow more weight. The depression hits 29. By 1932. Things are getting pretty fucked up and the farmers are both preparing to harvest the season's crops while simultaneously threatening to not deliver them to anyone in the country cause they're getting pissed off with the feds. Feds were being a bunch of renegers. So the story so far is bunch of world war one vets grow wheat in areas where wheat's hard to grow. Prices begin to plummet. So they grew more weight relying on government subsidies, only some of which actually happened. It's great. So things were looking about as bad as they could get for the farmers.
[00:05:05] Not quite. This is where about a thousand million emus cried out, hold my beer. So emus in this part of the country raise their broods inland then they routinely migrate en masse to the west coast in search of food and water.
[00:05:21] Will: Are they a migratory bird?
[00:05:22] Rod: Only in as much as, you know, they have a little party time in the pants, lay the eggs and then they all trundle off to the coast. Like most people do.
[00:05:29] Will: They're like salmon. They go in stream to lay their eggs or something like that. And then they trot back.
[00:05:34] Rod: So they're migrating West towards the coast and it turns out the land the vets were given had four awesome migrating emu positive features. One, it's already on their migration route.
[00:05:45] Will: Well, that would be the number one one. I think anything else is kind of redundant at this point.
[00:05:49] Rod: Why'd you stop at the big lobster? It was on the way. Two, the land has been conveniently well cleared so it's easy to get around. Extra water was being diverted to help grow the crops. So they have water. Also, there was the crops themselves, which were to emus, nummy.
[00:06:03] Will: And the farmers don't want it anymore.
[00:06:05] Rod: Fuck it. You can't sell it. Grow more and let the emus have it. So late 1932, a hoard of something like 20, 000 emus turned up in a town.
[00:06:12] Will: 20, 000.
[00:06:13] Rod: Yeah. 20, 000. This is guesstimates from the thirties in towns like Chandler and Walgoulan, which I've never heard of, but anyway, they all turned up.
[00:06:20] Will: I'm guessing they're not big towns so there's more emus than people here.
[00:06:24] Rod: And there's a lot of fields of wheat. So the emus would eat a bunch of the crops, but not only did they eat them, they trashed them because they're big footed oafs. And they'd also smash the rabbit proof fences, because they had to go between them and num nums.
[00:06:37] Will: Because they're buddies with the rabbits. The emus famously, big friends of the rabbits.
[00:06:40] Rod: A lot of the rabbits would ride in on the back of emus. So there's a report, I mean, I'm going to step through it, but there was a report back in, in 1953 that looked back on this period in the Sunday Herald. It described the emus as a Tough, prolific, gangling marauder of the sand plains, whose species, ever since the beginning of agriculture in the state, has invaded, in a frenzy of hunger, some of the finest fields at the time of ripening of the harvest, to shear off crops with voracious beaks, and to trample with great webbed feet.
[00:07:08] Will: Just, point of order on the words there, has invaded. I just want to say, just want to say, wheat grown agriculture in this part of the land came after the emus.
[00:07:16] Rod: I want to see your evidence.
[00:07:18] Will: !Don't have any. All I'm saying is it's likely that emus being native to Australia and probably, you know, hundreds and billions of years.
[00:07:26] Rod: Are you suggesting that the Sunday Herald in Sydney in 1953 may have been a little askew in its views about what belonged here and what didn't?
[00:07:33] Will: Maybe.
[00:07:35] Rod: Apparently also, they basically, for each one they ate, they'd probably smash about a hundred. So it's like, I'm going to eat that and trample another hundred more. Fuck yeah. This is delicious. Especially when you just rub it on your body and throw it away.
[00:07:44] Will: So they're making crop circles there. They're just trashing everything around. One that they eat and crop circle around it.
[00:07:48] Rod: Trash the rest as a lesson to others. So the farmers at this stage, they're pretty wrecked. Before the horde came, they're already fucked. Everything's horrible. Then the horde turns up, they're at their wits end. They're also really mad with the federal politicians who'd encouraged them to grow the wheat.
[00:08:02] So basically the pollies had encouraged them to grow the wheat to claim it, because they claimed it'd ease the burden of the depression.
[00:08:06] Will: I bet growing a lot of wheat eases your burden of depression.
[00:08:09] Rod: Eating it, that's what they suggest. If you have depression, eat a lot of wheat.
[00:08:11] Will: Grow a lot of wheat. No, that was the 1930s cure for for depression. Grow some wheat.
[00:08:16] Rod: And cigarettes. Have a few durries, eat a piece of bread, chin up, you'll be fine. So they were also shitty with Parliament because they said they'd subsidise the crops, which they didn't. And West Australian farmers were having problems because equipment was really expensive to get over there and use. And they kept saying, we need help. But the feds kept saying, piss off. So it's no surprise at this point, the wheat growers union in WA were enthusiastically supporting of the secession movement at the time, which was apparently in full swing. Carved WA off, sorry, Western Australia for our multinational listeners, from the rest of Australia. So their thinking was basically, we can do this on our own, or we're forced to.
[00:08:55] Will: Fair enough. Yeah. Not helping us with our emu plague.
[00:08:58] Rod: So there's some argy bargy between the different players. Then the federal government went, hang on a minute, maybe we need WA, they could be useful to us as a country.
[00:09:08] Will: Oh, really? Love you.
[00:09:09] Rod: Love you. Love you. So yeah, Canberra, as they keep referring to it, Canberra, we're in Canberra. We aren't the government. The government happens to be here with us. The feds went, okay, let's let's do something. So when the farmers heard this, they said, cool, we'll send a delegation. And part of that delegation was a deputation of ex soldiers, as you'd expect. And they went to see the minister of defense, Sir George Pierce, and they were met with a very receptive ear. He's like, I'm here to listen to you gentlemen, soldiers.
[00:09:36] Will: But minister of defense, their problem is with wheat prices and lack of support. How's the minister of defense solving their problem?
[00:09:44] Rod: We'll have another problem. Have you already forgotten?
[00:09:45] Will: Yeah, I get it. The emus, but it's also the minister of defense. Like, all of these are farming problems
[00:09:50] Rod: but these are soldiers.
[00:09:51] Will: Sure. But you know, you go to the department of agriculture, I have a problem with wheat prices. I have a problem with emu.
[00:09:57] Rod: But I'm a soldier. So let's talk to the military. Seems odd, right? So because they're World War I vets, they're pretty familiar with how effective modern tools of war can be. And they're super keen on machine guns. . So they asked for some,
[00:10:10] Will: can you just do that?
[00:10:11] Rod: Can we have some machine guns?
[00:10:13] Will: Like if you've been in one war, can you just say, can I have some machine gun?
[00:10:17] Rod: 'cause my wheat's not being sold.
[00:10:19] Will: Like, is there some sort of deal after a war, you're allowed to ask for stuff
[00:10:22] Rod: like you can choose one weapon. They asked for some machine guns. The minister, Sir George says, fuck yeah, but there are some conditions.
[00:10:31] Will: I mean, if you have so many surplus machine gun after the war, you're like shit, they're a problem to even house. We might as well give them to anyone who asks for them.
[00:10:40] Rod: Give them to a drunken farmer from W. A.
[00:10:42] Will: What the fuck? What world is this where you write to the government and say, can I have some machine gun?
[00:10:46] Rod: They went there. So the point is I went in person and that's how they didn't zoom in.
[00:10:50] Will: All right. Fair enough.
[00:10:51] Rod: Actually saw them face to face.
[00:10:52] Will: Yeah. Okay. Well, it's like turning up at the warehouse.
[00:10:54] Rod: Exactly. He shook the hand. You saluted the Queen.
[00:10:55] Will: Yeah, I talked to the minister. Can I have some guns?
[00:10:57] Rod: So he said, yeah, but the guns could only be used by active soldiers, of which these farmers were not.
[00:11:03] Will: No, they're retired.
[00:11:04] Rod: They are retired. They're vets. Yeah. Troop transport to get those soldiers to WA had to be financed by the WA government and the farmers would have to provide food accommodation and pay for the ammo.
[00:11:13] Will: Okay. We'll send some soldiers with guns. You can't just use the guns yourself. But happy to solve your emu problem with some soldiers and guns. You've gotta feed ' em though.
[00:11:20] Rod: Exactly. And transport them, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. And he also added Pierce, just wanted to make sure he'd get extra support within his, you know, parliamentary colleagues. The birds would make great target practice.
[00:11:30] Will: Sure. When we're fighting the hun again they'll be like emus
[00:11:34] Rod: Yeah. Long legs, big bushy things and no arms.
[00:11:36] Will: It's strange how weird the Germans in World War I they looked like emus.
[00:11:39] Rod: You saw their expressions. Right. When threatened, they rear up and go.
[00:11:44] Will: It's a strange thing like German soldiers are famed for throwing their heads in the sand. No ostriches.
[00:11:48] Rod: It is ostriches. can't tell these big birds apart.
[00:11:52] Will: It's also been suggested and it seems reasonable the feds thought, this looks like a really nice, inexpensive way to show that we care about WA and they won't leave us.
[00:12:00] Rod: Oh, really?
[00:12:00] Will: Yeah. This'll stop secession. Not a thimble full of blood.
[00:12:04] Rod: So with this agreement in place, the EMU war began. So command of the EMU war troops was given to, this is the name, Major Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith.
[00:12:16] Will: No, that's not an Australian name.
[00:12:18] Rod: It is not. Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith
[00:12:20] Will: oh my God. Like, like I get that, you know, we are a multicultural society here in Australia. We can have all names. But my word, that is a Welsh etonian right there.
[00:12:31] Rod: So he's a major in the Royal Australian Artillery's 7th Heavy Artillery. Because birds and wheat. So the campaign was scheduled to kick off October, 1932, rain delayed play because basically it rained and the enemies went, and they scattered
[00:12:48] Will: don't like the wet
[00:12:49] Rod: you know, they don't like the wet in a flock. They like to do wets in small groups. Maybe you drive better. There's more surface area. I don't know why. Second of November early in the morning, the seventh heavy battery got off the train at Campion in WA, which, and I know you're wondering where that is. It's about halfway between Perth and Kalgoorlie.
[00:13:09] So to be fair, it probably wasn't actually the whole battery. It was major Meredith and at least two other soldiers, Sergeant McMurray and Gunner O'Halloran.
[00:13:19] Will: It's a team of three.
[00:13:20] Rod: Not really a battery. The major plus two dudes, a Sergeant and a Gunner.
[00:13:24] Will: A Major, Sergeant and Gunner. I like the chain of command here. We've got one officer, one NCO to boss people around and one person to do the work. It's like you do all the work Gunner and you've got two bosses here.
[00:13:35] Rod: And the orders are going to have to go through the sergeant from the major.
[00:13:38] Will: Chain of command.
[00:13:39] Rod: The major can't tell you.
[00:13:40] Will: No, exactly. The major cannot talk to the gunner.
[00:13:43] Rod: That'd be gross and wrong. But it seems like from many of the sources I read, there may have been some support privates, gunners, the equivalent. It's because one or two of the sources talk about at one point, getting the troops to surround emus, and I don't think three people can do a lot of surrounding, but it could have been bad languages.
[00:14:02] Will: No, emus are scared by the triangle formation.
[00:14:04] Rod: They really freak out. A rhombus is fine. Straight line, no problem.
[00:14:07] Will: Okay. If you are Roman soldiers fighting, you know, like, like the Greeks or something like that, surround them and you can, you know, you can flanks them to death.
[00:14:18] Rod: If you're a couple of 1930s Australian soldiers
[00:14:21] Will: well, there's two problems. One, one is you're fighting birds that are fast birds. And two, you're firing guns. Like the circle formation is not great with range weaponry
[00:14:35] Rod: and they're not small guns, which we'll get to. They unpacked when they got there. Two Lewis automatic machine guns, Lewis guns. 10, 000 rounds of ammunition. So Lewis gun gas operated American originally used heaps in world war one. It was the machine gun of choice.
[00:14:53] Will: Well, great for gunning down cannon fodder. Love your work machine gunners. Remember that, well, the inventor of the machine gun thought this is the end to wars. , no one would fight a war with one of these. No.
[00:15:06] Rod: So it has a firing pan. I assume it's like a magazine that can hold around a hundred rounds. It can fire 500 rounds a minute. That seems a bit imbalance. But anyway.
[00:15:14] Will: So how many rounds?
[00:15:15] Rod: It could fire 500 a minute.
[00:15:17] Will: And how many does it hold?
[00:15:17] Rod: A hundred.
[00:15:18] Will: You can fire for 10 seconds. Great.
[00:15:21] Rod: You got to do it in squirts, controlled fire.
[00:15:23] Will: But I guess you don't want to slow it down so you can fire longer. That defeats the purpose.
[00:15:26] Rod: Defeats some purposes. Yeah. This is not a Lewis gun podcast.
[00:15:30] Will: No, it's not. If you want more information about the Lewis gun or any other guns
[00:15:33] Rod: go elsewhere
[00:15:34] Will: or don't. Stop it. You don't need information about guns.
[00:15:37] Rod: So the soldiers, the current and former soldiers, were both very confident the birds were fucking cooked. Like, we got these guns out. You guys are fucked.
[00:15:44] Will: We are going to see emu feathers in the sky for miles around.
[00:15:46] Rod: Chunks of emu meat.
[00:15:48] Will: Yeah. Well, that too. I'd be roasting me some emu.
[00:15:50] Rod: I've eaten emu. It's fine. It just tastes like bird. So they set up the entire two guns and pointed it at a flock of emus. Open fire.
[00:15:58] Will: How'd they go?
[00:16:00] Rod: The emus immediately scattered into small groups and buggered off in every direction possible. They're like, fuck this. Boom, gone. It's as if it was raining.
[00:16:06] Will: Did they get any?
[00:16:07] Rod: Not a lot. So this ruined the glorious plan of mowing them down quickly, conveniently, and en masse. Straight away I was like, that didn't work. Two days into the operation, the soldiers said, we've got to change our tactics. So they tried to ambush a flock of about a thousand. So they're holding fire until I got close, you know, whites of their eyes. So they're holding off.
[00:16:26] Will: Ambush emus.
[00:16:27] Rod: You gotta be very quiet. So they're holding off. They're holding off. They're holding off. The emus are coming forward. They get ready. Time to fire. One of the guns jams. And only a couple of emus were killed.
[00:16:38] Will: Hey, we've got a couple
[00:16:39] Rod: of 20, 000, whatever. So it quickly became clear they had wildly underestimated their enemy. And also their own abilities by the sounds of it. Cunning adversaries The emus proved almost impossible to hit with machine gun fire and they seemed able to shrug off even serious injury from bullets without breaking stride Major Meredith, he's done a few reports But one of the comments in his one of in his report said the emu is an amazingly hard bird to kill outright. Many carry mortal wounds of a distance up to half a mile. It is more than astonishing, it is miraculous. If I had a division of men who could carry bullets like that, I would take on any army in the world.
[00:17:14] Will: Here's an idea. Enlist the emus in the army. That would solve a lot of problems. Then the Germans would retreat. Yes they would. Like if they had only said to the emus, look, come and fight for us.
[00:17:25] Rod: We'll give you cash and wheat.
[00:17:27] Will: All the migration routes you can carry.
[00:17:29] Rod: So there's basically, they're going, holy shit, these guys are immortal, impossible to kill, crazy. So let's pause for a moment and learn about emus. So they're one of the largest birds on the planet, as we know.
[00:17:39] Will: How tall?
[00:17:40] Rod: About 185 centimetres. So they get to about six feet tall. They weigh 30 to 50 kilos, which is, you know,
[00:17:46] Will: That's not so big. I carry more girth than that.
[00:17:48] Rod: You're only 65.
[00:17:49] Will: That's not so impressive.
[00:17:50] Rod: But you're not a bird and you have arms. That's some serious tuck shop business going. Yeah, they can run at 50 kilometers an hour. Pretty fucking fast. They very intelligent, allegedly, and they travel in packs.
[00:18:00] Will: No, they're not. Very intelligent compared with other giant birds. Yeah. Look, anytime I've encountered EMU, I have not thought intelligence. Like, you know, you see a cockatoo or a gala or any other sort of parrott and these things look like smart.
[00:18:12] Rod: They're watching you and they're working you out. An emu just looks at you and goes, do you have a sandwich that I can steal?
[00:18:16] Will: Yeah, exactly. Look at this neck. I could get that sandwich from a long distance. And if you intelligence test is stealing sandwiches from a picnic, they'll kill it.
[00:18:23] Rod: Highly intelligent, let's say for birds.
[00:18:25] Will: I'm not buying their intelligence.
[00:18:27] Rod: So emus are not usually aggressive as a rule. I mean, they have big, strong legs that apparently they can kill a dingo, et cetera. When they're startled, they jump and they kick.
[00:18:35] Will: Yeah. As you'd expect. That's what your big birds do.
[00:18:38] Rod: And they don't attack with their beaks because those bits are soft. They try to keep their heads and necks out of the way.
[00:18:43] Will: They got a soft beak.
[00:18:44] Rod: Yeah, apparently. Quite squishy and the neck obviously is like a vulnerable bit.
[00:18:48] Will: That's the soft underbelly of Europe
[00:18:50] Rod: and it is definitely not a weapon of mass or even minor destruction. So basically they're not aggressive, but they're pretty fast. They can kick hard, et cetera. This is all the information I read, but what I didn't see was anything about them being bulletproof.
[00:19:02] And certainly nothing spoke about them being geniuses. Regardless, the soldiers who were shooting at these poor buggers began to quote, credit the enemy with unlikely military resources.
[00:19:16] Will: We're in fucking jurassic park here. Unlikely resources.
[00:19:19] Rod: So the soldiers started to report that the emus appeared to have picked pack leaders to stand watch. Aid in their escape and they developed, quote, guerrilla tactics.
[00:19:30] Will: Oh, stop it.
[00:19:31] Rod: For example. Each mob has its leader, always an enormous black plumed bird standing fully six feet high, who keeps watch while his fellows busy themselves with the wheat. At the first suspicious sign, he gives the signal and dozens of heads stretch up out of the crop.
[00:19:47] Will: See, I don't know if that's a leader. I think that's a scout.
[00:19:50] Rod: It can be both. A few of the birds will take fright once they see that happening, they'll start sprinting off into the scrub and the leader stays until everyone's reached safety.
[00:19:59] Will: Oh, that's a leader. There you go.
[00:20:00] Rod: Exactly. Scout leader. So the claim is they had these scouts, et cetera, but Meredith, the majors was not going to be foiled by fucking birds. He's like, no, screw this shit. Not going to happen. So he gets a Lewis gun mounted onto a farmer's truck. But it turns out when you add the gunner itself, the gun, 30 pounds, the vehicle couldn't actually keep up with the emus.
[00:20:20] Will: This is a 1930s truck.
[00:20:21] Rod: It is.
[00:20:21] Will: Yeah. This is not your modern Ford wild track. This is 1930s here. It's a model T.
[00:20:27] Rod: The horn goes ooga. Also the bumpy ride made it impossible to aim the gun properly. So apparently no shots were fired from the back of the truck at all. But one farmer decided to try and use the car to run down a slow straggling emu.
[00:20:41] Will: Cool. Do you know that improves the fitness of the flock though? Like if you get rid of the borers, the flock goes faster. So, you have to kill the hardest ones first.
[00:20:49] Rod: So they didn't do that. And this bawfer, to be fair, maybe not such a bawfer. So the hit and run, the farmer goes for the thing, hits the emu, it smashes through the car and gets tangled in the steering wheel. Then the truck runs off the road, plows through several feet of fence and then comes to a grinding halt.
[00:21:02] Will: It was a kamikaze emu?
[00:21:04] Rod: And a kamikaze truck it would seem, like that didn't work either. So the emu war was not going well. Within a week of first contact, troops were recalled. They said, fuck it. They reckon around two and a half thousand rounds had been fired and they killed somewhere between 50 and 200 emus Out of 20, 000
[00:21:25] Will: but maybe they'd scared a bunch off because these emus are smart enough to have leaders. Maybe they might scared off the migration.
[00:21:32] Rod: We're going to go to the East coast. It's safer. So, and Meredith did report though, the major, at least none of his men had suffered any casualties. So that's good. Great. Literally. He reported that. Well, I guess no casualties. You got to, it's a military command, you have to. So 8th of November. The Australian house of representatives had a chat about the operation. So they're in parliament. How's it going over there?
[00:21:54] Will: There's a bad instinct in all of us. It's like, I wish there was something more exciting going on. It'd be interesting, you know, give us a weird dictator or a nuclear war or something like that, but you know, this idea that Australian parliament is debating a fight with some emus. It really does say something about, you know, this is quiet times. Simpler times
[00:22:13] Rod: Betwixt to the wars. So yeah, they're debating in the house of reps. So an opposition smart ass chimes up and says, would a medal be minted for the people who participated in this conflict?
[00:22:23] Will: Of fucking course
[00:22:25] Rod: and a federal labor parliamentarian said, of course, any medals that would go to anyone, they should go to the emus because they'd won every round so far.
[00:22:35] Will: Well, it seems true.
[00:22:36] Rod: It's true. It is true. It's just, it was very witty. And of the defense minister, George Pierce, he earned the unofficial title of minister for the Emu war. So of course the local media jumped up and down and went, this is a complete cluster fuck. And so Pierce withdraws the troops, November 8, it's out, done, cooked.
[00:22:54] And after the withdrawal, Meredith says, if we had a military division with a bullet carrying capacity of these birds, it would face any army in the world, as mentioned earlier.
[00:23:02] Will: With the bullet carrying capacity. Do you mean like, like taking bullets? No, they're saying they hit them.
[00:23:07] Rod: They're claiming that, or when they noticed they hit them, they didn't seem to care much or at least it took a while to care, but he goes on to say they're like Zulus, whom even dumb bullets could not stop. So apparently the Zulus were impervious to bullets too in his experience, or at least his reading.
[00:23:25] Will: Problematic times.
[00:23:26] Rod: Weren't they? It was a tad colonial back then. As opposed to these perfect times in which we live now. A dumb bullet, I think explodes or something or shatters things.
[00:23:34] Will: It's a hollow top. So, it's got a carved out bit, but once it hits the skin, then it will burrow through the body so it'll have an entry wound like that and an exit wound like that.
[00:23:46] Rod: Small hole at the front. Nothing in the back.
[00:23:47] Will: Huge hole at the back. Like they, they have been banned for a long time in the civilized world. Like, I don't even know in the non civilized world, wherever that is, a regular bullet is designed to stop an enemy soldier, potentially kill them, but stop and kill rather than
[00:24:01] Rod: fuck up their lives forever. Unless you're apparently a Zulu warrior, in which case it doesn't matter. Just like an emu, according to Major Meredith.
[00:24:09] So at the time, Sunday Herald reports, one of the members of the, I assume the war party. So one of the soldiers saying there's only one way to kill an emu, shoot him through the back of the head when his mouth is closed.
[00:24:20] Will: When his mouth is closed, otherwise he'll catch the bullet. Why does the mouth?
[00:24:23] Rod: I don't know, or shoot him through the front of his mouth when the mouth is open. That's how hard it is. So the point really is, it's very specific. It's back of the head with the mouth closed or front of them. So battle number one goes to the emus. Round one, so after round one is over, the EMU attacks on crops, unabated, continue. Farmers keep asking for help. The Premier of Western Australia, whose name I didn't record, I'm sure it was like Keith Snell. Mr. Premier. He was very vociferous in his support for the renewal of military assistance. Let's do it again. Let's get some more soldiers.
[00:24:57] Will: There are other solutions.
[00:24:58] Rod: No. just guns. Machine guns. If you think about it, it's obvious.
[00:25:03] Will: Yeah. I feel like, you know, a couple of lion,
[00:25:07] Rod: just drop some lions in. Fucking great. Imagine if Australia was chock full of lions
[00:25:11] Will: 400 dingoes
[00:25:12] Rod: you know, lions would go off in this country too. It'd be like, we introduced one or two flocks of lions, whatever they call it, hordes
[00:25:18] Will: definitely flocks. It's a flock of lion
[00:25:20] Rod: and they go off. So the Western Australian premier is very supportive and at around the same time as he was being supportive, apparently there was a report from the base commander and I'm not sure who the base commander was. It might've been Meredith, and he said that 300 emus had been killed in the first operation, which is apparently successful enough for the minister, sir George, to approve the resumption of military efforts on the 12th of November.
[00:25:45] Will: So how long do we postpone for?
[00:25:46] Rod: A couple of days? Yeah, this is the eighth. They pull out on the 12th, the minister goes, yeah, go for it. So the military again says, okay, we'll lend you guns. But the Western Australian government expected that they would provide necessary people again, the military, et cetera.
[00:26:00] But apparently there was a lack of experience machine gunners in WA, which I find hard to believe. But anyway, that was the story. So Major Meredith is back in. He dives back in. So, war number two. November 13 and 14, 1932, around 40 EMUs were killed. 40 out of 20, 000. And that's just one herd.
[00:26:18] Will: Well, out of 19, 970
[00:26:21] Rod: I have lost a couple. Some may have been born as well, though. So that's November 13, 14. November 15 day three was quite far less successful. So it gets a little confusing here, but it looks like Meredith was recalled on or sometime before December 10. So less than a month later, his final report claims 986 confirmed kills using 9, 860 rounds.
[00:26:46] So exactly 10 per confirmed kill. Coincidence, he also claimed exactly two and a half thousand wounded birds had died from their injuries. Again very precise. He's a military man. He likes precision. He's an artilleryist. So despite all the issues with machine gun culling efforts, the farmers continued to request military existence in 1934, 1943, 1948. At least they went, can we do it again?
[00:27:10] Will: Why are they still believing that this is the pathway out of this?
[00:27:13] Rod: Cause guns.
[00:27:14] Will: My God. I know that they're Western Australian like vets. Like the point being that they're vets, they're given some land and they're like, okay, the solution to this is guns.
[00:27:22] Rod: Throw more guns at them.
[00:27:23] Will: Like, there's not a lot of biological problems we've solved with guns.
[00:27:27] Rod: Not many. Luckily the feds refused every request. They said no. We're done. We're done.
[00:27:32] Will: Smart federal government. We're only doing this twice. Fool me once, then shame on me. Fool me.
[00:27:38] Rod: No, always shame on you. We're politicians. It's always shame on you.
[00:27:41] Will: Fool me quite a few times.
[00:27:42] Rod: Still you. So in the end, it was a bounty on the EMUs that was the most effective. So between one started in 1932. Didn't go so well, but they tried. So between 1945 to 1960,
[00:27:54] Will: they kept what? Hang on.
[00:27:55] Rod: This kept going.
[00:27:56] Will: My timeline was like we were in 1930s here.
[00:27:59] Rod: Yeah. So the war was in the early thirties. The bounty was put in place around that same time. That kept rolling.
[00:28:06] Will: Oh my God.
[00:28:08] Rod: So, and the only numbers I could find 45 to 1960, 284, 000 emus were knocked off. Bounties claimed.
[00:28:15] Will: I don't like that we became more successful at killing things.
[00:28:20] Rod: Do you eat meat? Do you eat meat?
[00:28:23] Will: Yeah, but they're freaking native animals. Like why did we, I do like the policy worked
[00:28:29] Rod: when you are a policy guy.
[00:28:31] Will: That's what I care about. All I care about is knowing if the policy achieved the goal, then we can tweak.
[00:28:35] Rod: Absolutely. So the other thing that helped was, you know, a fence. Yeah. So by 1953, the Western Australian government had spent in the, in their times, 52, 000 pounds For a 215 kilometre EMU proof fence.
[00:28:50] Will: WA is much bigger than 215 kilometres.
[00:28:52] Rod: Not that bit.
[00:28:53] Will: Oh, just the short bit of WA. The neck.
[00:28:56] Rod: The EMU bit. So the EMU fence was actually adapted from an existing fence originally constructed to surprise, keep out rabbits.
[00:29:02] Will: Well, we just upgraded it.
[00:29:04] Rod: Yep, we did. Made it taller. We made it EMU er.
[00:29:06] Will: You know, we're still doing it?
[00:29:07] Rod: Yeah, we are. This is the thing this fence, they call it the state barrier fence. It's more than 1200 kilometers long now. And it plays a critical role in stopping the emus. Often the way it does this is by trapping them and maiming them so they die of thirst or get picked off by dingers. They get tangled and shit, so that's great.
[00:29:21] Will: Well, we're still making fences on native animals.
[00:29:25] Rod: And rabbits.
[00:29:25] Will: Okay. Fence those fuckers. Whatever.
[00:29:27] Rod: Which aren't native to here, they're native to somewhere.
[00:29:29] Will: But seriously, you can have a 30 centimetre fence, fence out some rabbits. Yeah. Rabbits, we all know can historically get fucked from Australia. We don't need them. Emus, emus, they got a right.
[00:29:39] Rod: They were here first. That's why they're on our coat of arms. And we, of course, eat them.
[00:29:43] Will: Yeah. But people eat their coat of arms all the time. English eat unicorn all the time.
[00:29:47] Rod: They do. They keep the real family going. Unicorn blood. So basically the Australian army lost. They lost the war to the emus.
[00:29:53] Will: So how many casualties?
[00:29:55] Rod: Australia lost no humans.
[00:29:56] Will: How many emus lost?
[00:29:58] Rod: At least nine.
[00:29:59] Will: Well, there you go. Who won?
[00:30:00] Rod: No one. Anyway, so they lost. They lost the war of emus. So one last thing. There's a movie. Well, there was a movie planned. So John Cleese wrote a version of a tale called The Great Emu War. He decided it was a very funny idea. Production was originally set for 2022 with Moby apparently going to do the soundtrack. So obviously Moby, you're thinking Emu War, Moby. do you remember Moby?
[00:30:21] Will: Yeah. Like, like every ad in 1998. But also, you know, it's quite a nice dance.
[00:30:28] Rod: I think he's very relaxing
[00:30:29] Will: and maybe he's into soundtracks. Maybe he's into killing emus.
[00:30:33] Rod: So John Cleese, Rob Schneider, Camilla, Cleese's daughter, and Jim Jeffries from Australia, they wrote the final script at the beginning of 2021.
[00:30:43] And they'd hoped, Cleese said to start shooting within a few months. So probably 2022, 2023, it looks like it didn't happen. At least not so far, but it gets better because a troop of Australian comedians did make a movie. So umbrella entertainment and hot dad productions had the first screening of their version of the emu wars, October, 2023.
[00:31:05] Will: You're going to go watch it?
[00:31:05] Rod: I've seen the trailer and it is fucking spectacular. It's so quintessentially and ridiculously Australian. There's butt jokes, fart jokes, two dudes kissing to stay warm. There's terrible special effects. Like the one and a half minute trailer is gold plated, awesome, ridiculous.
[00:31:20] It's in the show notes, obviously, if you want to find it. So yes, there's at least one movie and maybe another with his himself, John Cleese in charge. So the Australian army lost, but movies apparently are winning.
[00:31:32] Will: No, look I'm going to go for obviously the emu here. You know, they're the winners. No, I was on their side from the beginning.
[00:31:37] Rod: Of course you were, you could tell.
[00:31:38] Will: I was.
