Great Emu War
| Date | 2 November - 10 December 1932 |
|---|---|
| Location | Campion district, Western Australia |
| Belligerents | Royal Australian Artillery; emus |
| Strength | 3 soldiers, 2 Lewis guns, 10,000 rounds; approximately 20,000 emus |
| Result | Emu victory; operation withdrawn twice |
| Casualties | Emus: disputed. Soldiers: none. |
The Great Emu War was a wildlife-management operation conducted in the Campion district of Western Australia between November and December 1932, in which soldiers of the Royal Australian Artillery were deployed with two Lewis guns against roughly 20,000 emus.[1]
The emus won, twice.
Background[edit]
After the First World War, returned soldiers were settled on marginal wheat land in Western Australia. When wheat prices collapsed in the Great Depression and promised subsidies failed to arrive, about 20,000 emus arrived instead, having discovered that cleared farmland with reliable water is a considerable improvement on scrubland.[1]
The farmers, many of them ex-servicemen, petitioned the Minister of Defence, Sir George Pearce, for machine guns. Notably, they did not petition the Department of Agriculture. Pearce agreed, on the conditions that the guns be operated by soldiers, that the farmers pay for the ammunition, and that the resulting footage be usable for publicity.[1] Of the three conditions, only the first two were met.
The campaign[edit]
Command fell to Major G. P. W. Meredith of the Seventh Heavy Battery. The first engagement, on 2 November 1932, established the pattern for the rest: the emus broke into small groups and ran, the gunners found that a Lewis gun is designed for men advancing in lines rather than for birds sprinting at 50 km/h in different directions, and the guns jammed.[1][2]
A second attempt mounted a gun on a truck. The emus outran the truck; the terrain shook the gunner so thoroughly that he could not fire, and the only confirmed collision of the campaign was between the truck and a fence.[2]
By 8 November the operation had been withdrawn amid ridicule in Parliament, where one member asked whether a medal would be struck for the campaign and was told that any medals should go to the emus.[1] Under renewed pressure from the farmers, the guns returned on 13 November and stayed until 10 December. Meredith's final report claimed 986 emus killed with 9,860 rounds: a rate of ten rounds per bird.[1]
Meredith's assessment[edit]
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. They are like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullets could not stop.
This is the only known instance of a professional artillery officer filing a comparative assessment in which his own weapon comes second to a flightless bird.
Aftermath[edit]
Further requests for military assistance in 1934, 1943 and 1948 were refused.[1] The problem was eventually reduced by a bounty scheme and by exclusion fencing, which is to say by agriculture rather than by artillery. The emu is now protected under Australian law,[3] and Australia remains the only country to have lost a war to a bird it also prints on its coat of arms.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Murray Johnson, "Feathered foes: soldier settlers and Western Australia's 'Emu War' of 1932", Journal of Australian Studies 30:88 (2006), pp. 147-157.
- ^ "The great emu war: In which some large, flightless birds unwittingly foiled the Australian army", Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2 November 2016.
- ^ Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth), listing of Dromaius novaehollandiae.