Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Great Emu War

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

After the first world war, many Australian veterans settled in the Campion district of Western Australia to become farmers on land provided by the government. It was there they encountered an enemy far more cleaver than any which they encountered in Europe. They fought this enemy with state-of-the-art weapons and vehicles, yet it still wasn’t enough. Learn more about the Great Emu War on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After the First World War, many Australian veterans settled in the Campion region of Western Australia to become farmers on land provided by the government. It was there they encountered an enemy far more clever than any which they encountered in Europe. They fought this enemy with state-of-the-art weapons and vehicles, yet it still wasn't enough to ensure victory. Learn more about the Great Emu War on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? Throughline is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR.

This episode is sponsored by Brilliant.org. Brilliant's mission is to inspire and develop people to achieve their goals in STEM. one person, one question, and one small commitment to learning at a time. They enable great teachers to illuminate the soul of math, science, and engineering through bite-sized interactive learning experiences. Their courses explore the laws that shape our world, elevating math and science from something to be feared to a delightful experience of guided discovery.

If you're interested in learning more about any STEM subject, go to Everything- Everywhere.com slash Brilliant. Once again, that's Everything-Easteworth, If you haven't been to Australia, it's a really big country. It's approximately the size of the continental United States, but with the population of Florida and Kentucky combined. One of the reasons the population density is so low is, one, it's far away from everything, and two, the vast majority of the country is a giant desert. The Australian government created a program in 1915 to settle military veterans in farmland owned around the country. By 1920, they had

purchased over 200,000 acres of land, and had settled down about 5,000 soldiers, but they still needed more land. They ended up settling soldiers in some of the marginal land in the southwest corner of Australia called the Campion District. This land was given with the intent that the veterans would grow wheat. The problem was, this land was really marginal. Not only was the land marginal for growing wheat, but almost none of the veterans had experience farming. On top of all that, come 1929, the Great Depression hit, which caused global wheat prices to plummet. However, all of these problems paled in comparison to what appeared in 1932. Emus. Lots of emus.

Emus have been a part of the Australian landscape for many thousands of years. And if you don't know what an emu is, it's basically the Australian version of an ostrich, but a little smaller. Without knowing, the ranchers and farmers in the region had inadvertently created a paradise for emus. Emus, unlike ostriches, actually require a lot of water. The arid conditions of the Australian outback provided a natural check against the growth of the emu population. Ranchers created watering holes and watering trough for their sheep, which were also used by the emus, allowing their population to explode. The wheat farmers were basically growing emu food. The emus loved

wheat. Not only did the emu population explode, but they traveled in groups. There was a giant herd, uh, flock. Wait a second. What do you call a group of emus? There was a giant mob of emus, 20,000 strong, which would trample the wheat fields and destroy fencing, which kept the rabbits out, which was also necessary.

Basically, the emus were ruining everything for the farmers, and the farmers wanted to do something about it. These farmers, if you remember, were all military veterans, so they took their complaints to the Australian Minister of Defense, Sir George Pierce. Having served in World War I, these men had seen the weapons of war, and they had a proposal for the minister as to how to take care of the emu threat. Machine guns. In particular, the Lewis gun. Their plan was to take a machine gun, mounted on a car, drive to the mob of emus,

and then just machine gun them all down. Now, not being an expert in emu eradication, if someone came to me with the idea of machine gunning down a giant mob of emus, I would think that such a plan would work. I grant you, maybe it's a bit overkill, but as far as achieving the goal of emu elimination, I would have bet money that the machine gun all the emu's plan would have probably worked. The government actually approved the plan, if for no other reason than the publicity. Western Australia was in the middle of a popular secession, movement, and the government wanted to look like they were doing something. They even sent a film

crew along to document the Great Emu War. The emu calling was supposed to begin in October of 1932, but due to rain, it was held off until November. A small military unit equipped with two Lewis machine guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition were sent out. On November 2nd, they had their first engagement with the enemy. They found a mob of 50 emus at a distance and fired. Unfortunately, they were too far away and they only got about a dozen of them. Two days later, there were reports of another mob of emus of about a thousand birds near a dam. They positioned themselves for an ambush, but this time the gun got jammed. They got about a dozen more. For the rest of the week, they set out to get more emus, but they had very little

luck. The emus would see them coming from a distance and then just scatter. By November 8th, only somewhere between 50 and 200 emus were killed at an expense of 2,500 bullets. One ornithologist named Dominic Servantine noted, quote, The machine gunner's dreams of point-playing firing to serried masses of emus was soon dissipated. The emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldly army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment on economic. A crestfallen field force, therefore, withdrew from the combat area after about a month, end quote. The emu war had become a laughingstock in Parliament.

One minister from New South Wales inquired if a medal would be given out to the soldiers who took part. Another minister from Western Australia responded that if awards were to be given out, they should be given to the emus, who won all the battles. Later that month, a second campaign was launched, which was about as successful as the first. Basically, the Great Emu War of 1932 was pretty much a failure. Machine guns really weren't that effective. Major GPW Meredith, the leader of the expedition, said, quote, 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, end quote. While the organized military opposition to the emus failed, the farmers did manage to inflict heavy casualties on the emu population in later years. Rather than use the military, the Australian government just instituted a bounty system where the farmers were responsible for the eradication themselves. In 1934, for example, over a six-month period, 57,034 emus were killed. Eventually, better fencing solved most of the emu problems for the farmers. Today, the emu is still on the Australian coat of arms, and there are approximately 650,000 emus in Australia. So, for those of you following along at home, the score still remains, emus won, Australia Nothing.

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