Australia and the World Past and Present

I only heard about this strange episode of Australian history a few years ago.

It sure makes a for a good story. It has a remote, outback location. There are rugged protagonists and one of the world’s largest birds.

1932.

Campion District, Western Australia.

Following WWI, returning Australian soldiers were given plots of land by the government to settle on an farm.

These soldier-settlers attempted to eke out a new life for themselves and their families. In this remote and sunburnt part of the continent, they sowed wheat on marginal land.

These farmers were in precarious position and things kept getting worse.

The Great Depression led to a slump in the world economy from 1929 onwards. The farmers saw drop in wheat prices.

Enter the Emus. About 20,000 of them.

Emus had entered the Campion District and had decided to stay a while. For the farmers a bad situation had just got worse. What to do? Well, in Australia in 1932 it seemed that it would be a good idea to call in the military.

The Minister for Defence, Sir George Pearce, sent in a contingent under the command of Major Meredith with two Lewis guns and 10,000 rounds of ammo.

And off they went.

On November 2, Meredith and his men made their first sortie against 50 or so enemy. However, the emus were out of range. This first foray was a failure.

Two days later, a mob of over a thousand was spotted. The order was given to open fire. 12 birds were killed before a gun jammed.

One army source wrote “each pack seems to have its own leader now…keeping a lookout.” The Emus were becoming battle-hardened and were organising.

Initial attempts by the army hadn’t been very successful. The battle moved on to its next phase – a Lewis gun was mounted to the back of a truck. Even with greater speed and maneuverability, the soldiers were no match for their avian counterparts. The soldiers still couldn’t close the distance and driving at speed over uneven ground made accurate shooting impossible.

Ornithologist, Dominic Seventy wrote “The Emu command had evidently ordered guerilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of military equipment uneconomic.”

The campaign was all over within a month.

In all, there had been 986 kills with 9,860 rounds spent. An additional 2,500 were believed to have been wounded and later died.

Is there a moral here? Does it represent our desire to use simple solutions to solve an immediate problem? Does it represent our desire to control the natural world and shape it according to our will? Does it represent the ultimate triumph of nature? Or just that emus are damn hard to catch?

The episode spawned the phrase ‘Minister for Emus’ and talk about whether there would be service medals – perhaps for the emus!

So concluded the Great Emu War. Only in Australia.