Australia launched an offensive against emus in the 1930s

IT WAS a military offensive never before seen on Australian soil. A battle which required parliamentary approval. Oh, and Australia lost.

Australian Army machine gunners. Machine gun firing at Port Range by Light Horsemen from Gawler Camp. Undated. Hodgkins Gun,...

WHEN the green light was given for Australian soldiers to launch a military offensive on home soil, it was done so with haste.

Reports had been flocking in that a new enemy was threatening the livelihoods of hardworking West Australians — and something needed to be done fast.

It was 1932 and the country was still recovering from the Great Depression.

The situation was desperate.

This new invader left nothing in its wake. Hordes would obliterate everything in their sights.

The WA Government, distressed by the onslaught, made a request to the Commonwealth for an immediate and serious course of action.

Simply defending home soil would not be enough. Australia needed to eradicate this new found enemy.

So Defence Minister Sir George Pearce gave the go-ahead to launch a full military operation, now known as the Great Emu Wars.

Yes, that’s right, emus. This was the big new threat that was destroying lives.

It might sound a bit far-fetched but even today this native bird, which forms part of our coat of arms, still wreaks havoc across Australian farmland.

But the great cull of 1932 wasn’t a success. It was a complete failure yet it remains etched in our history as an official act of war.

A small group of soldiers from the 7th Heavy Battery Royal Australian Artillery were drafted in to take out the flightless birds. They were put under the command of Major CWP Meredith, whose initial strategy appeared to be to go in Rambo-style.

The soldiers were given Lewis machine guns and around 10,000 rounds of ammunition.

Surely that would have taken them out? Apparently not.

Australian Army machine gunners were drafted in to take on the big new threat — emus. Picture: The Advertiser/Krischock.

The team set off on November 1, 1932, for the rich agricultural plains (of the now former settlement) of Campion, about 271km northeast of Perth, to begin the campaign.

But when they arrived they discovered it was too late to save some of the farms.

Some farmers had already been driven from their properties, unable to stop the beasts, which had destroyed everything in their paths.

These beasts were nothing the soldiers had ever encountered before.

They were tall, fast and agile and moved in packs.

Immediately they began firing yet the ferocity of the machine guns were no match for these skilled adversaries, whose numbers were estimated to be around 20,000.

It’s OK. I laughed at this too. They did really fire machine guns at a bunch of emus and missed.

But wait, there’s more.

A new tactic had to be devised for the second day — an ambush.

About 1000 of them had been reported moving towards a nearby dam.

So, the soldiers lay in wait. As daylight broke the first wave appeared and the men opened fire.

But despite unloading hundreds of bullets, the soldiers only managed to kill less than a dozen of their feathered foes.

‘You talkin’ to me?’: This is the great evil they were fighting against in the Emu Wars. It’s in his eyes. Picture: Brendan Radke.

According to a report from the The Sunday Herald, which no longer exists, the emus had a six-foot leader who would keep lookout. Yes, lookout, to alert the others when the gun-toting soldiers approached.

The story was the same for the next few days with the emus managing to outsmart their human opponents with minimal casualties.

After nine days, and very little success, the emu offensive was called off much to the despair of struggling farmers but to the amusement to the rest of the country.

The Sunday Herald reported years later, in July, 1953, that Major Meredith found the emus almost impossible to defeat.

“If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds it would face any army in the world,” he was quoted as saying. “They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. They are like Zulus whom even dumdum bullets could not stop.”

The paper also quoted another emu-hunter as saying: “There’s only one way to kill an emu — shoot him through the back of the head when his mouth is closed, or through the front of his mouth when his mouth is open. That’s how hard it is.”

Following their withdrawal, there was uproar with the WA farmers claiming the military offensive did have an effect.

What about this chick? I wouldn’t want to mess with her. Picture: Dimex.

An article on November 10, 1932 in the now defunt newspaper The Argus, wrote those in the Campion district were “alarmed at the Defence department’s decision to recall the machine gun party which had been eradicating the emu pest”.

“The settlers state that after overcoming preliminary difficulties the gun party had begun to make an impression on the ravaging hordes,” the report says.

The decision also became a source of ridicule in parliament with Sir George being labelled “the Minister for the Emu War”.

Despite the mockery, Pearce crumbled to the pleas of the farmers and ordered another offensive against the flightless birds two days after he cancelled it.

The group was recalled and sent back to the sweltering settlement of Campion.

It had been revealed the first operation managed to kill 300 birds, but there were still thousands more which wreaked havoc across the farming community.

So Major Meredith and his troops opened fire once again killing around 40 on November 13, 1932.

By the time December rolled around the team were killing around 100 emus per week.

However the mission eventually came to an end on December 10, 1932.

According to reports, Major Meredith claimed they killed 986 emus with 9,860 rounds.

He also claimed 2,500 birds had died as a result of the injuries that they had sustained from the offensive.

Despite the kills, the emus remained a problem in the mid-west.

Farmers tried numerous ways to try to stop emus from ravaging their crops.

It would take another 20 years before the WA Government would embark on another ambitious project — an emu-proof fence.

Costing 52,000 pounds, the 217kms fence, which is 4ft10 high, was joined to the rabbit fences across the state.

Since then successive governments have had to deal with problematic emus.

In 1994 the WA government sanctioned a cull in the Mid-West region after complaints from farmers emus were gathering in large numbers along the fences.

Conditions in the area were dry, and many of the emus had become trapped and starving.

Volunteers were given permission to shoot the birds in a bid to prevent them from suffering.