The Emu War of 1932 marked an unusual meeting of forces of both man and bird, creating a battle between Australian farmers and the strong and majestic emu. This flightless bird, which can sprint with ease on its strong calf muscles, pushed the farmers into a tenacious and ferocious conflict.
To understand this conflict, one must look at the conditions that preceded it. Following World War I, the Australian government, in an effort to offer integration with the civilian population, gave war veterans parcels of land to cultivate and harvest to make a decent living in agriculture. Strangehistory.net reported, in “The Emu War of 1932,” by Beach Combing, that these programs that rehabilitated the veterans ended in relative success, with many of these new farmers specializing in herding cattle and growing wheat. The relatively positive outcome would remain on a positive slope until the Depression of 1929. Striking hard at the rural market, the Depression caused a blackout within the agricultural field and prices of crops to plummet, specifically wheat. With that in mind, many of these once soldier and now farmers were expected by Canberra (Capital of Australia) and the Parliament to lift the economical siege by producing more wheat. Unable to comply with such desire, the farmers’ circumstances were not improved once the emus arrived “ahead of the harvest.”
The emus have been depicted as vermin in the time following WWI. Due to negligence and lenient restrictions on the bird’s population, the emus grew exponentially in numbers. Combing stated that at one point when the Depression hit Australia, some 20,000 emus descended upon the rural countryside, thus devastating many of the farmlands that the veterans were cultivating. After filing multiple complaints to the Minister of Agriculture, the veterans decided to take the issue to the Parliament.
In response to the flightless crisis, the Parliament dispatched three machine gunmen, equipped with 10,000 rounds of ammunition. Tasked with eliminating the threat on sight, these men did not achieve much throughout their campaign.
Emus seldom travel in large groups and exhibit extraordinary reflexes. The Australian gunmen came to a logical realization that emus differ from humans in terms of maneuverability and dexterity. For the first few days, the three-man team did not spot a significant number of emus. Many creative ideas, such as having the presence of light cavalry or strapping the machine guns to trucks, ended in futility. The greatest confrontation took place on the fourth of November. Spotting a pack of a 1000 emus headings towards a machine gun nest, one of the company men opened fired, immediately killing 12 emus. Unfortunately for the gunner, the gun jammed during the engagement, allowing the rest of the 988 emus to escape. In the events preceding and following that day, most of the emus had managed to escape with their lives unscathed. When the Australian government received a briefing on the peculiar conflict, the numbers were staggering. In the Scientific American article “The Great Emu War: In Which Some Large, Flightless Birds Unwittingly Foiled the Australian Army,” it was reported that out of the 2,500 rounds of ammunition that were spent, only 200 emus had lost their lives. Embarrassed by such staggering statistics, the Australian government eventually pulled out the three man force on November 8, 1932.
The events that shrouded the Australian countryside in a feathery fury are unlike any other. Though other approaches could have been taken, the situations at the time demanded for a more extreme outlook that certainly deviated from the usual course of war.