In 1932, an army of soldiers fought 20,000 emus with machine guns. The flightless birds defeated the military operation, two times

It sounds like an episode straight out of the Looney Tunes show, but Australia really did send soldiers armed with machine guns to deal with thousands of emus in the year 1932. The unusual event, which is now known as the Great Emu War, took place in Western Australia when large numbers of the flightless birds moved into the wheat-growing region and started to cause damage to the farms.

What the government expected to be a short military operation turned into an embarrassing failure, with the troops eventually had to be withdrawn, and then were sent back for a second failed attempt.

The Emu crisis

The crisis unfolded in the Campion district of Western Australia, where farming communities were already facing difficult economic conditions during the Great Depression. Many veterans of World War I had been settled on farmland, while falling wheat prices added to the pressure on farmers.


In 1932, after their breeding season and a period of drought, large numbers of emus moved towards the wheat-growing areas in search of food and water. Estimates put their numbers to be as many as 20,000, as per ABC News.

The birds found newly cultivated fields that were filled with grain. They fed on those crops and damaged the farmland, while their movements also broke through fences. All of this created another problem because rabbits could now easily enter the agricultural areas through the damaged barriers.

Farmers appealed to the government for assistance after ordinary ways of dealing with the birds had already failed.

Military arrived with machine guns

According to State Library of Western Australia, the government responded by sending a small military force to the region. On November 2, 1932, Major G.P.W. Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery arrived with soldiers carrying two Lewis machine guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition.

The plan was simple and quite straightforward; target the emus when they gathered in large numbers and reduce their population enough to protect the farms. But the soldiers quickly relaised that shooting these birds was much harder than what they had expected.

Emus can grow to around 1.9 metres tall and are known to be able to run at speeds of up to 50 km/h. Instead of remaining together when approached by the soldiers, they scattered into smaller groups and moved rapidly across the farmland. Their speed and unpredictable movements made them difficult targets for the people firing the machine guns.

The first attempt ended badly

One of the early military attempts involved an ambush near a dam where the soldiers expected a large group of emus to gather. The result was disappointing. Fewer than a dozen birds were killed while around 1,000 fled, with a machine gun also reportedly jamming during the attempt.

The soldiers later tried mounting a machine gun on a truck so they could pursue the birds. But the rough terrain made it difficult to aim accurately, while the emus were able to outrun the vehicle very quickly.

The military began to realise that their weapons were not producing the expected results. Meredith later described the birds as having the “invulnerability of tanks.”

With only limited success, Defence Minister Sir George Pearce ordered the troops to withdraw.

The emus return for round 2

The withdrawal did not settle the problem because according to reports, Pearce faced a “storm of protest” by the local people after the troops were pulled out.

He later told parliament that although hundreds of emus had been shot, the birds had returned in thousands once the military operation stopped. The campaign against the emus therefore had to be resumed.

But the second attempt did not change the outcome and the troops eventually withdrew again after about a month, leaving the government without the quick solution it had expected.

The emus had effectively defeated the military operation that too two times in a row.

What Australia did after the failed ‘war’

After the military campaign ended, other methods were used to deal with the problem, including bounties and stronger fencing. By 1953, the Western Australian government had spent £52,000 on a 215-kilometre emu-proof fence, according to the Sunday Herald.

The barrier was adapted from an existing fence built to keep rabbits away from agricultural areas.

The Great Emu War has since become one of Australia's strangest historical episodes. However, behind the bizarreness and humour it was a genuine crisis for farmers, but the military response failed to achieve its purpose.