Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Emu Wars

Episode Date: April 17, 2019

Did Australians really wage war on a group of emus? YES. Learn all about it in today's short stuff.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and there's Jerry. Let's go.

So, do you remember when we went to Australia on tour? Yes, I do. Remember how fun that was? It was fun. It's like it was just a dream. It was like a dream, a good, good dream. When we were there, like we do at all of our live shows, we do some Q and A at the end and take questions.

And on more than one occasion, in more than one city, we had someone stand up and said something along the lines of, you should cover the emu wall, right? We were like, we thought emus were birds, and they went, just look it up. Right. So we did that, and here it is. Go.

Okay, all right, let's go. So, to go, Chuck, we have to go back to the end of World War I, and a lot of Australian veterans were returning from the war, and the government said, you know what, we want to show you guys how happy we are with you, and just to say thanks, we're gonna set you up with a bunch of acres of farmland, and you can start farming.

And not only can you start farming, if you grow wheat, we'll buy it from you at ridiculous prices. So basically, we're setting you up to go set up a life for yourself as farmers here in Australia. And it sounded pretty great, right? Like all the veterans were like, yeah, let's do that. Give us some land, and that's where the first problem comes in.

Yeah, because they didn't have enough land. They didn't, I don't know if they didn't think they would, as many would take them up on it, or if they didn't count right. Right. But they had about 200, close to 222,395 acres of land to split between 5,000 soldiers. It was doled out in order.

Obviously the best stuff went away first. And then if you're at the end of the line, you got your land in Perth, which sounds like a dig. I love Perth. I thought it was great. Yeah, me too. It was much different than I thought. It was pretty amazing,

but it's apparently not great for farming. Right. It's not great for farming. There are also rabid infestations. I believe there's also a drought in Western Australia, which is where Perth is. So all of this happens right after the government agrees, to set all of their veterans up like this.

So it looks really bad that immediately there's hardships associated with this kind of government dole plan, right? Yes. Then the Great Depression ends up hitting. But as it's hitting, they're debating exactly how much they're gonna pay for this wheat that their veterans are going to grow for them. And it starts out really, really generous.

They say like four shillings, which is, Per bushel. Right, per bushel. I'm sorry. Yeah. No, per piece of wheat, which at the time, that was pretty good price for a bushel of wheat. And it was like government subsidized wheat.

And then the government said, yeah, we're not gonna do that. Let's try again. And they came up with another bill and they said three shillings. Said, okay, that's still pretty good. And they finally settled. And in 1931, at four and a half pence,

and there's not many pence in a shilling. So that was a pretty steep reduction between four shillings down to four and a half pence per bushel. So that's kind of like, they're starting to add insult on to injury now. All right, so park that to the side. And we'll tell you a little bit about the Australian emu,

which I saw on a couple of my little adventure trips. I'm sure you did as well. They are, I mean, a dumb American might say it looks like an ostrich. I was about to say it looks like an ostrich. Yeah, we're dumb Americans. I'll say this, it looks more like an ostrich than it looks like a cardinal.

Right, way to save us Chuck. They're, you know, they're tall. They're about six, six and a half feet tall, depending. They can weigh up to a hundred pounds or more. They kind of do their own thing for the most part. They get together to breed, but they really don't like to be around other emus usually, except when they go off and get food.

They're grazers and they will graze together, but they're all like, they're all just sort of in the same area grazing, they're not like forming a pack or forming a bond or anything like. Right. They're just hungry and they're big and they like to hang out generally by themselves unless you've got tons and tons of new wheat fields

in Western Australia. Yeah, they'll eat just about anything, but you know, if they have a plentiful supply of wheat, you can attract a lot of emus with a lot of wheat. And so all of a sudden there's a big old supply of wheat in Western Australia because all these veterans showed up and started growing it there. And so the emus started to come

and they started to eat this wheat and the veteran said, whoa, whoa, whoa, emus, this is my wheat. I'm growing this because the government's going to pay me for it. And the emus said, we don't care, we're gonna eat your wheat anyway. And all of a sudden the first shot

in what would become the emu war was fired by the emus. And we'll come back right after this to finish this ridiculous story. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

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or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just listen up to Josh and Chuck, stuff you should know. All right, so it's 1932. These veterans are growing wheat in Western Australia. And 20,000 emus see nothing, basically, but a big wheat buffet in front of their faces. Right.

And so they descend upon Western Australia. These veterans are like, it's out of control. I don't know if anyone's noticed. But we actually need help, government. You gave us this land. You're not paying us well for it. And now these emus are eating it all. And this is going to be a big problem for the country

if Western Australia is tanked all of a sudden economically because of these emus. And so the army under the direction of Major General P.W. Meredith said, let's go kill a bunch of emus. Right, because so this is a problem that has kind of saddled the Western Australia veterans who are growing wheat out there.

But it's also a really big opportunity for the government to show just how much they care about their veterans. They're going to send the army out to take care of this emu problem. And so the government saw it as enough of a propaganda move that they actually sent out a Fox movie tone news cameraman to film this whole thing, to be used as propaganda to show what the government's doing.

And I guess because they assumed that most Australians would want to see 20,000 emus slaughtered by a machine gun. Of course they would. So they sent somebody to go film this massacre. Yeah, but this was all under, there was a deal to be made. And they said, all right, we'll do this. We'll help you out. But you got to pay for the ammunition, veterans.

And you got to provide food and lodging for these soldiers. And the veteran said, what? The veteran said, all right, I guess we have no choice. So sure, we'll do that. Here's the other thing about the emu. If you get a gun out and you start shooting at them, they're going to stop grazing and they are going to go berserk.

Right, right, because remember they don't actually have much of like a society or a pack or anything like that. So they're not coordinating. It's just every emu for itself all of a sudden. And if you have 20,000 of them doing every emu for themselves, yes, it's like what you said, they go berserk. Yeah, so it's a big problem. You've got machine guns.

These emus, 20,000 of them are, it's not like they're all packed in a couple of wheat fields. They're spread all over Western Australia. They're all over the place. They're running, it's crazy town that these emus are running everywhere like crazy birds with their gangly legs and their, I mean, have you ever seen an emu run? It's pretty funny looking.

I've seen an ostrich run. It's probably close, you know, more like more the same than a cardinal running. Right, exactly. And if you've got a machine gun, you're to spraying bullets basically hoping that you're going to hit an emu. There's no like take aim and fire.

They're just like shooting that direction. And the result is they're not killing many of these things at all. No, no, I mean, they were surprised to find that they might as well have been deployed to go shoot at a B problem with machine guns for the effect it was having on the emus. They were just, the emus were basically indestructible,

it turned out, not because they could withstand a bullet, but because they were just moving too quick and too berserk to get hit by a bullet, you know? They were like, I put three bullets into this thing, but it just made them angry. It didn't even break eye contact. So they had these machine guns are jamming. They didn't have a lot of guns.

You know it's a problem if they're worried about the cost of ammunition to begin with. Right. They stage multiple offenses over the course of about six days, none of which were very effective. And media coverage starts pouring in. It's not a very good look. So six days later, they kind of bail on that, stage

another attempt a few weeks later, that was not much more successful. I mean, we're talking about killing a few hundred birds out of 20,000. Right. And they were apportioned 10,000 rounds of ammunition. They used 2,500 rounds just to kill 200 of the 20,000 emus. So they were pretty surprised that when those numbers started

coming in, and the rest of Australia heard about this, it did not look very good for the military. No, it did not look good. And even at the time, and even in Australia at the time, it wasn't a good look for the army to be slaughtering birds. Sure, even though they had been classified as vermin at the time, I think most people were like, what are you guys doing?

I'm glad the emus are winning. So people started rooting for the emus. Yeah, so it's pretty much a big disaster. Like I said, they had a couple of offenses they mounted. None of them were super successful. They eventually just stopped, basically, the emus won the war of the emus. Right, for then, for the time being,

at least with the military. After that, the farmers in Western Australia said, we'll just take care of this ourselves. And so they found that just using a single-shot rifle was much more effective, so much so that within a few months, something like 50,000 emus had been killed in Western Australia by gun, just not machine gun. Yeah, and what really helped was in 1930,

when they started to build fences around these farms. Right, helped a lot. It didn't help, though, that the army had actually broken one of the fences. While they were still shooting at the emus, they had mounted a machine gun onto the back of a car. So they could catch up to them. Yes, and were riding along.

And I guess they ran over an emu, and it got caught up in one of the axles so that they couldn't steer, and they drove through somebody's fence, which made all the papers as well, because that was a big part of the emu wars, too. Cue Yackety Sacks. Exactly.

Apparently, the people of Western Australia asked for assistance from the government again for emus in 34, 43, and 48. And each time, the government and army said, no, no, no, we're not going down that road again. No, but the emus said, can you guys just please leave us alone? And the government finally said yes,

and protected them once more. They were no longer vermin. So we'll say this is a happy ending? I guess. Not if you're an emu, but sure. I got nothing else. All right, that's it. Short stuff.

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