The “Great Emu War” has taken on a life of its own as a story to mock Australia—but it is doubtful any other country could have done better under the circumstances.

Many obscure trivia buffs have heard of the Great Emu War, where the government of Australia declared all-out war on an enormous flock of marauding flightless birds threatening its agriculture—and was unable to beat them. That description is technically accurate, and although it is incomplete and lacks context, it makes for an amusing story. Who, after all, has ever heard of a country losing a war to a bird?

The numbers give some context as to why the Australians failed. In November 1932, 20,000 emus confounded the efforts of three—count ‘em, three—Australian soldiers, armed with two Lewis light machine guns, to halt the birds’ destructive migration into Western Australia’s “Wheat Belt.”

Now that we have established the basic facts of what happened, let us examine why things unfolded the way they did, and apply the context missing from most casual accounts. Once we do that, the outcome is far from surprising—and has nothing to do with the Australian Army’s basic competence.

Why Emus Invaded Western Australia 

After World War I, the Australian government sought to cultivate mostly barren Western Australia by granting farmland to returning soldiers. The effort was concentrated around the coastal city of Perth on Australia’s sparsely populated west coast, where land was cheap and plentiful. The new farmers began irrigating and planting wheat, giving the region its name. They built wildlife fences to keep Australia’s ubiquitous rabbits and dingoes away from their crops.

Things were going well until the Great Depression caused wheat prices to plummet, hitting the farmers hard. The government offered subsidies, but failed to deliver on them. As the farmers’ money grew tighter, and the financial losses from animal activity grew lighter, the fences fell into disrepair.

Then, in 1932, a drought in Australia’s interior caused a new problem: hordes of emus, a flightless bird native to Australia, moved toward the coast in order to find sustenance. This had happened before, but in late 1932, the birds found something new: vast, well-irrigated wheat fields where only desert scrub had been some years before.

Emus are intelligent birds, and some 20,000 of them descended on the Australians’ fields, penetrating the ill-kept fences and feasting on the wheat. What was left of the trampled fences could no longer keep out the rabbits and dingoes, either, who added to the carnage.

The farmers reached their breaking point. They could not fight off the emus and other wildlife themselves, so they turned to the government. But instead of requesting help from the Ministry of Agriculture, they went straight to Defence Minister Sir George Pearce—asking him for machine guns to wipe out the threat.

Australia (Sort of) Sent in the Army Against the Emus

Pearce saw an opportunity to help the farmers while also bolstering the Army’s image at a time of national hardship. But he, like everyone else, misunderstood the problem and drastically underestimated the emus.

To combat the birds—which, again, numbered some 20,000 by contemporary estimates—Pearce sent one officer, named Major Gwynedd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith, and two enlisted men, Sergeant S. McMurray and Gunner J. O’Halloran. The three of them had an army truck and two Lewis light machine guns. The three men launched their “war” on the emus on November 2, 1932. What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty, if one considers the situation.

First, the emus were scattered over hundreds of square miles and were very mobile. Emus regularly travel up to 15 miles per day as they wander in search of food. They can also run at up to 30 miles per hour over long stretches, or 55 miles per hour in bursts. Meredith and his men were nowhere near that mobile; they were operating from a truck in areas without roads, and did not know the countryside well.

Second, as one might expect, the three soldiers were trained to fight men, not animals. They had prepared for conflict in the style of the Western front of World War I, with established fields of fire and a relatively concentrated enemy who lacked mobility. The emus were concentrated… at least at first. But after the soldiers opened fire, they dispersed, scattering in small groups at high speed. Two soldiers with machine guns were not equipped or trained for that scenario.

Third, a running pursuit between an emu and a truck was essentially useless. Meredith’s men were not trained to fire that way, and the bouncing, cross-country chase made aiming impossible. Even a well-planned water hole ambush went awry when a Lewis gun jammed after only a few rounds, serving only to scatter the thousand or so emus that were in range.

Fourth, soldiers are not hunters, or wildlife managers, and machine guns are terrible hunting weapons. The skill sets and tasks are completely different. It didn’t help that the emus could absorb several rounds of machine gun fire and keep running. In fact, Meredith famously observed that “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.”

Finally, the intelligent emus adapted over time. They began feeding in smaller, more dispersed groups, with one emu serving as a lookout who warned the rest when a threat appeared. The Australian press likened them to “generals” watching over their individual commands. “Each pack seems to have its own leader now,” an Army observer noted. “A big black-plumed bird which stands fully six feet high and keeps watch while his mates carry out their work of destruction and warns them of our approach.”

By the end of the first round of hunting on November 8, Meredith and his men had killed a few hundred birds, using most of their allotted 10,000 rounds of ammunition in the process. They called it quits, complaining about the futility of the mission—but Pearce sent them back a week later after the farmers demanded further action. The three soldiers gamely spent another few weeks on the hunt, killing an estimated 100 birds per week. By the start of December, the confirmed death toll among the emus grew to 986 birds—around 5 percent of the pre-“war” total. But it was wasteful and time-consuming work, and Meredith withdrew again, this time for good. At a rate of 100 emus per week, it would have taken the three soldiers until 1936 to finish the job.

Australia Eventually Paid Farmers to Shoot Emus Instead

As news of the failure spread, Peace became a target of public ridicule. The defense minister had dispatched a film crew to document the entire enterprise for publicity reasons. The publicity backfired spectacularly, and mockery of the effort poured in not only from Australians, but from around the world.

On November 19, the Australian Senate called Pearce to testify and asked whether a more effective, humane way to deal with the emus could be found. Pearce defended his efforts, saying that those who were not familiar with the country in which emus roamed could not believe how much damage they could wreak. Pearce’s assessment was undoubtedly correct, but so were the senators who questioned him. There had to be a better way.

The government eventually came up with a far more effective method of culling the emu population: introducing a bounty system, wherein anyone could claim a small sum of money for presenting a dead emu to the authorities. Western Australia being what it was, many of the farmers had been former soldiers, and nearly everyone owned a rifle suitable for hunting. Farmers began patrolling their own land, often helping each other, and dealt with the problem themselves. The results were far better than the military campaign had been: more than 57,000 emu bounties were claimed in the first six months after the system was implemented in 1934.

Today, emus are a protected species in Australia, and have a robust population that is vital to the island’s complicated ecosystem. Strong steel fences protect farmland vulnerable to their depredations, making cohabitation possible.

The Great Emu War, despite the publicity, wasn’t all that great. Nor was it much of a war, considering the Australian Army sent only three soldiers. If there is a lesson to be learned here, it is probably that hammers (or machine guns) aren’t always the answer, especially when dealing with nature. Sometimes, a few well-wielded scalpels will do the job much more effectively.

About the Author: William Lawson

William Lawson is a military historian focusing on World War II and 20^th century conflicts and the American Civil War. His specialty is operational level warfare, especially American amphibious doctrine. He writes on history, politics, and firearms for multiple publications and historical journals. He serves on the editorial advisory board for the Saber & Scroll Journal and Military History Chronicles and is a member of the Society for Military History and the American Historical Association. Lawson is based in Virginia.

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