The Great Emu War of 1932: Emus, Soldiers, and an Unexpected War

[EPISODE 49] The Great Emu War of 1932: Emus, Soldiers, and an Unexpected War 

Kyle Risi: And the thing is, it makes sense that they're hardy because, they're essentially surviving dinosaurs. Mm. They survived. Millions of years. And a meteor. And a meteor. And ice ages. Yeah. It's like, pah! Your bullet's no match for me! I witnessed the meteor of 65 million years ago! I've seen THING man.

You think you scare me? You think your tank scares me? Come on! 

Adam Cox: Come on! 

Kyle Risi: Welcome to The Compendium, an assembly of fascinating and intriguing things. We're a weekly variety podcast where each week I tell Adam Cox all about a topic I think he'll find both fascinating and intriguing. Stories from the darker corners of true crime, mind blowing historical events, and legendary people.

We give you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering. 

I'm your host this week, Kyle Reacy. 

Adam Cox: And I'm your co host, Adam Cox. 

Kyle Risi: And in today's compendium, we're diving into an assembly of unexpected warriors and a battle down under, Where the underdog had wings, but not the kind you expect. 

Adam Cox: Ooh, I think I might know what this one's about. 

Kyle Risi: Really? Go on, tell me. What are your thoughts this week? 

Adam Cox: well, I think this could be about, if there's talking about birds, it feels like actual birds rather than like pilot wings, and if it's down under, could it be something to do with the emu wars?

Kyle Risi: Yes, that's correct. Yeah, so I'm assuming you know this story then. I know a little bit about it? So for those who don't know about the story I'm going to be telling you about what is considered to be probably the most laughable and ridiculous war that has ever been waged So ridiculous in fact that the enemy didn't even know they were in a war But yet they still managed to come out on top and win against a fully kitted out army of soldiers With the most hilarious results.

I am of course talking about the great Australian emu war of 1932 so you've heard of the story Adam. Mm hmm. What is it that you know? 

Adam Cox: Well, I didn't realize it was that old Would 

Kyle Risi: you thought this was like in the noughties or 

Adam Cox: something or like the 60s or 70s?

So it's older than I thought it was right there and I'm assuming I think vaguely, they were known as being a bit of a pest, right, in terms of crops., 

Kyle Risi: correct, so the Great Emu War of 1932 was a super unique and somewhat funny event in Australian history. Although, I say funny, it probably wasn't that funny to the soldiers or even the poor emus who were under attack at the time.

But it's funny because no matter what these soldiers did to try and contain this huge number of emus, they just couldn't stop them in any kind of meaningful way, considering that these soldiers were fully kitted out with machine guns and tanks and everything. So, it's such a great story that I'm really excited to tell you about it today.

But before we dive in, shall we do? All the latest things. Let's do it.

 So this is the segment of our show where we catch up on all the week's happenings, share a quick tidbit of breaking news, weird facts, or stories from the past week. So Adam, what have you got for us today?

Adam Cox: Well, do you know what? I think my latest news this week is actually well timed for your podcast. What do you mean? 

Kyle Risi: It's about emus? 

Adam Cox: No, it is about birds. It's about a bird that was accused of being a Chinese spy and was held in India for 8 months. Oh really? 

Kyle Risi: Yeah. Okay. Tell me more 

Adam Cox: So yeah, a pigeon was accused of being a Chinese spy But has now been cleared by police and has been released back into the wild.

Was he relieved? Was he like, woo! Dad jokes Yeah, he must have been but he was detained in a port in Mumbai when People found that he had these two rings tied to its legs, which featured words that appeared to be Chinese. And so they thought the Chinese were spying on them using a pigeon.

Kyle Risi: Okay, uh, but It's understandable. If I saw some weird writing on a bird with the little rings of Chinese writing, if I was maybe the type of person who was maybe conspiratorial, I'd I'd think so. 

Adam Cox: Well, yeah, it's not, um, uncommon them to be carrying messages and stuff like that, homing pigeons.

But the fact that it was accused of being a spy, it was quite interesting, I thought. But it turns out it was just some regular pigeon that got lost from Taiwan. But it made me look into the history of. Pigeon spies. And it's been going on for over a century now, and I think the first instance of this was, um, just before the first world war, a German guy called Julius Neubronner had devised a small automatic camera to strap to one of his birds on routes to find out where it exactly was flying from point A to point B.

And what year was this? this was 1907. 

Geez, how big was this damn camera from 1907? 

know that's, like technology used to be a lot bigger than it is now. It's like dragging this camera around. 

Kyle Risi: You used to see these computers that were like literally the size of rooms. So God knows what this camera must be like. Like when you see those Victorian photographers taking photos. They're big, giant boxes. Poor pigeon 

Adam Cox: man. 

So I don't know how big exactly it was. Obviously it's small enough for the pigeon to fly. Or 

Kyle Risi: maybe not. Do we even know that the pigeon can fly? We're just strapping a camera to a pigeon. No one said anything about flying.

Adam Cox: Never took off. Um. So yes, that was the first instance. And then apparently the German military started using that technology in World War One. And then it really kicked off in World War Two, including like Britain and the United States.

They donated homing birds to be used by Allied troops in relaying secret messages across enemy lines. And they would also begin to start strapping cameras on top of these pigeons to carry out secret missions and spy on what was going on. And it's not just, pigeons as well, I think they've even trained crows and hawks and other things like that.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, I think like, crows would be super intelligent 

Adam Cox: Well crows are always a bit mysterious anyway, but a pigeon goes undetected, they're so common, And no one's gonna think, oh that pigeon's spying on me over there.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. That pigeon's eyes look shifty. 

Adam Cox: But they've taught these birds to even put recording devices during the Cold War on the window ledges of houses that contain suspected communists. Oh really? That's clever. And ravens were taught to snap photographs through the glass using cameras carried in their beaks.

What the hell? How are they going to pull the trigger on that? Like, how are they going to pull the shutter? I don't 

know, but that's pretty impressive, like, this little technology that If it's true, I don't believe it. Well, in the University of Washington, they were actually trying to work out how they could teach birds to recognize faces, including Osama bin Laden at the time.

So they were going to use some form of bird to try and Tracked down Osama Bin Laden. Oh my god. 

Kyle Risi: What's that gonna look like though when the pigeon comes back and it goes , What is it boy? Who'd you see? It's like trying to mime I've seen Osama Bin Laden. 

Adam Cox: Yeah, but I thought it was fascinating.

there's even CIA, missions which are still classified to this day of these pigeon missions. Oh, really? And the photos have never been released. Really? But I've seen these photographs and they are quite clear actually. So these cameras can, even like in the 70s and 80s, they still could take quite a decent picture.

That's cool. 

Kyle Risi: They'll probably become declassified at some point. 

Adam Cox: Probably. The next time you're walking down the high street and you see a bunch of pigeons, they could be spying on you. Be 

Kyle Risi: suspectful. Yeah. Suspectful. Suspicious.

Adam Cox: Suspicious . Be respectful, but suspicious. . 

Kyle Risi: Yes. So what have you got for us? 

So, mine isn't as sophisticated as yours this week.

That was sophisticated? Yeah, I think that was quite a sophisticated story. I think that was pretty cool. Mine's all about lies we were told as kids. Uh huh. Yeah. Do you remember those? Yeah. Do you remember some of the lies that our parents would tell us? I probably still believe some of them. 

So there's like a, there's two categories of this. There's the lies that our individual parents have told us, but then there's also like these widely believed lies that just the world told us when we were kids. If you were born, before the 1990s, then maybe some of these will ring a bell to you.

Do you remember when Marilyn Manson supposedly had his ribs removed so that he could You know, uh, perform oral sex on himself . Do you know 

Adam Cox: what, I feel like that's a rumor that went round, but I don't know where But you heard it, that's the thing! Heard it, yeah. 

Kyle Risi: You heard it! Yeah. Where did that come from? I don't know. And how did that get around? Because this was pre internet days, right? This was like at 

Adam Cox: school, you'd hear this. Yeah! Yeah. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah. I always wondered where that came from. 

Adam Cox: Are you saying that your parents lied to you for this? 

Kyle Risi: I don't know, it wouldn't be my parents who told me that.

Can you imagine trying like a nine year old like, Kyle, I've got some good gossip for you. 

Um, do you remember hearing the one about the bizarre rumor that Richard Gere had stuffed a gerbil up his bumhole? 

Adam Cox: Yeah, wasn't that on like Family Guy or something where it just crawled down his pants?

Kyle Risi: Yeah, but that wasn't the origin, they were just referencing it. Like this was from the 1990s, where did that come from? I don't know. It's just so weird. Who made that up? Who has a fetish of sticking those up your bum? Um. Because they would do some damage.

They're burrowies. Have you seen, have you seen those things like burrowing in their cage, like kind of clearing out all the sordids? Yeah. I would not want that happening up my bum. 

Adam Cox: No. I don't think anyone would. 

Kyle Risi: So the next one was that old wives tale. That eating carrots significantly improve your eyesight.

Adam Cox: Oh yeah, that one. You're taught that at an early 

Kyle Risi: age. Apparently it's not true. Is it not? No, I might have some benefits on your eyes, but it doesn't like, significantly allow you to see in the dark. 

Adam Cox: Yeah, it was either that, and then eating spinach would put hairs on your chest. That's what I was told. Or give you curly 

Kyle Risi: hairs, wasn't it? Or curly hairs, something like that. Oh no, that was your crusts, wasn't it? If you eat your crusts, you get curly chest hairs. Sure. And even now, I always say that like, I think I've said it to you an niece before, like, eat your crush, you'll get curly chest hair,

And she's like, five. It's like, I don't want that. . Doesn't she had them never assume? No. Okay. Do you remember this one? The common misconception that it was illegal to drive with your interior light. Is that not 

Adam Cox: illegal? That's not illegal! But that doesn't help anyone. It's distracting.

To whom? Well, the person, if you're in the car and someone's got it on. But then 

Kyle Risi: what's the light for? 

Adam Cox: Well, so you can, if you're like parked up and everything, then you can put the light on. But you don't put it on whilst you're driving. Yeah, 

Kyle Risi: but it's not illegal. And we were told that it was illegal. Mmm. Bloody lying adults. 

 next , this was a classic one. Kyle, there's no need to buy me a birthday present this year. So I did it, and that was a big lie! 

Adam Cox: Yeah, you should have known that. That, and when anyone says I'm fine. 

Kyle Risi: You're not fine, are you? Oh, what else do I remember? Oh yeah, this one. Your parents probably told you this all the time. If you tell me now, you will not get in trouble. Just tell me the truth. Our parents were secret cops! 

Adam Cox: That was just their way of, um, yeah, rattling you out Yeah, 

Kyle Risi: exactly. do you remember when your mom and her friends would say, So handsome. There's going to be a line of girls queuing up around the corner to date you. There never was. There never was. Such liars. Oh, yeah. This was good. This one was a good one.

Now, Adam, you're not always going to have a calculator with you. I don't know. Yeah, with the maths, the whole maths class thing. Like, I'll just use a calculator, but you're not always going to have a calculator. But now we do. Lie! We always have a calculator. Every time we're doing any maths, there's always a calculator at hand.

Adam Cox: Yeah, and plus you've got a mobile phone now, so you always have a calculator. 

Kyle Risi: Even more so, that's exactly what I mean. That's exactly what I mean. We're not just walking around with a calculator. 

Adam Cox: Casio in your back pocket. 

Kyle Risi: Uh, what else did we have? So, oh yeah, this one is my favourite one. I used to get this one all the time.

If you play with it too much Oh god. You'll go blind. And I never did! I mean, I'm going blind now. My eyesight's 

Adam Cox: twiddling. Maybe it's delayed. It's a 

Kyle Risi: delayed response. Oh no! Um, The belief that ignoring bullies makes them go away because bullies are just jealous of you. 

Adam Cox: I mean, there's probably an element of that, but I don't think they go away. No, they don't 

Kyle Risi: go away, it gets worse. Oh, yeah. And that's pretty much it really. I do have this story of this girl who her ancestor believed that her mother was a Grammy award winning singer and her parents always told them that they had loads of trophies up in the loft and like she was really successful and brilliant singer. So they would like tell all their friends that their mum was a Grammy award singer, and it all turned out that it wasn't true at all.

To the point where they were like, our mum is really terrible at singing, so one year, what they did, is they just randomly remembered this lie that their mum would tell them all the time growing up. So for Christmas they bought her like a mock Grammy and got her name inscribed on it on a particular year and the second she saw it she just burst out laughing and to the point she cried.

But yeah that's the thing though like we get lied to so much as kids I wonder what like the modern day lies that we are telling kids now because I know we try to always be a bit more open and honest with children but what will turn out to be the greatest lies that we are telling this generation in 

Adam Cox: 20 years time? Um, I don't know. We've got to wait until they're grown up and messed up. Yeah, 

Kyle Risi: messed up. Yeah. I wonder if, um, uh, Your niece will come up to me and go like, I never got my curly chest hairs.

Yeah. Just be really upset. Maybe. So that's my latest things for this week.

 You ready? 

Adam Cox: Emu.

Kyle Risi: So Adam. What 

Adam Cox: is an emu? It's not an 

Kyle Risi: ostrich. Correct! I didn't think you'd get that. 

Adam Cox: But it I don't know, long legs and I guess that sort of poofy body. And long neck. So there's 

Kyle Risi: resemblance. Yeah. Well, in fact, they are related. So emus, as you said, these large, flightless birds, they're native to Australia.

They're the second largest bird in the world, right? Only second, obviously, to the ostrich, which they're related to. They're characterized by their long necks, they've got these strong legs, brown, feathery bodies. But weirdly. They're the only birds to technically have calf muscles. Really? Yeah! 

Adam Cox: Bizarrely.

I've never looked at an emu's calf that 

closely 

Kyle Risi: before. I mean, I did try to have a look to see if I could understand where the calf muscle was, and I couldn't really see, but apparently it's like a, it's a reverse knee thing but it technically, in all sense of purposes, it's a calf muscle.

 So, if you're really into calf muscles, and you're partial to a bit of sexy bird play, Then these are the birds you want to hit up. I'm just going to make a note of that. Yeah, good. I knew it. But what's really fascinating about emus is that it's the female emus that are the dominant ones, and they're the ones that really dominate the males during breeding.

Because after the female lays their eggs, the responsibility falls on the males to incubate. The eggs, and then take care of the chicks. 

Adam Cox: The men can 

Kyle Risi: stay at home. The men can stay at home. So the females just bugger off to mate with another male. So, the males literally don't eat or drink for up to three months at a time while they're sitting on those eggs.

So when you see those emus wandering around, and you see them with their chicks, those are the dads! Oh right.?

Adam Cox: Whilst the, whilst the women are out there. Yeah. Abandoning their kids. Having it off with other men.

Kyle Risi: That's it! And also, like, they're super agile animals as well. If you've ever seen an emu playing, it's just the most delightful kind of, display of this frantic jumping and, like, twirling and, rolling around 

Adam Cox: and How they run is always quite funny. It's just In a herd of emus. I don't know what they're right, the flock, or whatever they're called, yeah.

Kyle Risi: Flock, yeah. It's brilliant, they're just so cute. And also, they're fast, eh? They run up to, 30 miles an hour, which made it so difficult for these soldiers to shoot because they were just zigzag all over the place like making it really impossible to shoot.

 And so this is what made for an entire month of tomfoolery in which this war was waged, which just ended up becoming the biggest shitshow in probably Australian history.

Kyle Risi:

Adam Cox: love the fact that they did nickname it the Great War. Of emus. That's it, the Great 

Kyle Risi: War. But the thing is, it didn't need to be a war, and that's the crazy thing about this. And it lasted a month. It lasted a whole month before they were like, okay, that's not working. Okay. But, in today's episode of the Compendium, I'm going to be telling you about the Great Emu War of 1932.

How it got started. Why The war was not just a standard wildlife management initiative, which it probably should have been. And I'll tell you how it all went wrong and the unfortunate fallout of this bizarre historical event. Because it's a doozy. So before we begin the Tale of the Great Emu War of 1932, I want to give you a bit of context by first telling you what life was like for ordinary Australians leading up to 1932.

Adam Cox: Because I thought you were gonna start with what life was like for Emus leading up to 1932. 

Kyle Risi: That's a whole different podcast there,

because this is gonna give us an understanding of the backdrop of how the great Emu war of 1932 got started. So, after World War I, the Australian government was faced with the challenge of reintegrating soldiers, returning, back from the war into kind of everyday society. To do this, the Australian and the New Zealand governments introduced what they called the Soldier Settlement Scheme.

And basically, this aimed to thank soldiers for their service, and then provide them with a means of making a living, all while giving back to the Australian economy. So the basic premise behind the settlement scheme was that the government would offer land and financial assistance to help set the soldiers up as wheat farmers. While at the same time having the dual benefit of developing the more rural areas of the country. And of course, providing much needed wheat to the Australian people.

So this was pegged as like a win win situation all around and was hugely popular amongst the general public. However, the issue with this scheme was that many of these soldiers had little to no experience as farmers, and many had never even visited a farm in their entire lives since many of the soldiers that fought in the war came from the more urban areas, right?

 They were completely unprepared for the challenges of running a farm and even for the more experienced farmers farming Was already difficult in australia on account of the poor quality of land, But also often these newly established farms were in such remote areas of the country that basic farming infrastructure just just didn't exist like irrigation systems, fencing, and even roads.

So all of that had to all be built from scratch. And to further compound this, none of the new farmers that have been given this land any experience or even any money. to even start building this infrastructure. Right. So they were just trained, minimally, dumped into kind of these rural areas and just said, right, there you go, grow some wheat.

And I'm like, well, how do I fertilize the land? how do I till the land? How do I protect the land? How do I build a fence? How do I get water to it? They just didn't know this, so it took a long time for them to just get on their feet. And while the Australian government were doing what they could to try and support them. It was difficult and was about to get a lot worse.

Because halfway around the world in the USA on the 24th of October 1929. The Great Depression kicked off with a major stock market crash. And as a result, hundreds of banks failed, thousands of businesses closed, millions of people lost their jobs, and hundreds and thousands of families faced homelessness and even starvation.

And because America was such a major driver of the global economy, the Depression quickly spread from country to country, largely due to the huge drop in international trade, which kind of started to drag many other countries into the Depression, along with the United States. And Australia in particular, they were hit really hard.

Like the country was already heavily reliant on exporting wool and wheat, which all of a sudden just experienced a significant drop in demand. And then on top of that, to compound all of this, Australia was already facing their own domestic challenges and I just feel so sorry for Australians during this time because you really get the sense that Australians were really keen on just establishing themselves as like on a par with other countries on the global stage.

But they just get getting chow, essentially. 

Adam Cox: Yeah, I don't really know too much about Australian history, aside from obviously, UK sending over criminals and things like that, and then taking over. But yeah, it's interesting. I didn't realise, how long it perhaps took them to get their identity and I 

Kyle Risi: mean, they've always had their identity from early on, but they just weren't given a fair chance, right?

They were still establishing their own governments, but they're still under control of the Crown, which was just so oppressing anyway, because the Crown wanted to obviously make sure that they were getting their cut of everything that Australia made, that it didn't really give them the leg up that they needed in order to, Be like their own entity on the global stage, but after World War One happened, they started to kind of get a sense of how they could kind of carve their way in the world, but they just kept facing obstacle after obstacle after obstacle

because at the time, like before Australia established their own currency, they were using the Australian pound, which was at the time that was pegged to the British pound, which in turn was then based on the gold standard But in 1931, out of nowhere, the UK decides that they're going to abandon the gold standard, which then had a huge impact on the Australian economy, which was already feeling the effects of the depression.

So on top of this, a drought was also raging across Australia in this year as well, which made it even harder for the already struggling farmers to generate any decent crop yields at all. And when they did produce anything, it was literally pennies on the pound because the price of wheat at the time had just fallen right through the floor.

So you got these farmers that were like, Given this land, given no resources, no money, they had to kind of make it on their own. They're finally getting there, and then all of a sudden the price of wheat just falls through the floor and then they can't get, they can't make a decent living. And then you've 

Adam Cox: got the drought as well.

And you've got the drought. And then overall demand in the world, things changing. So, yeah, it just feels like a very tough time. Like you, yeah, you're given this opportunity, but everything's against you in making this 

Kyle Risi: work. Exactly. And as a result, obviously, many of the farmers, they did protest, which resulted in the Australian government promising to subsidize farmers for that shortfall, which later just turned out to be a complete lie because, of course, the depression hit the currency in such a big way that the government just couldn't afford to pay those subsidies at all.

So by all accounts, man, things were tough. they were tough across the world, but in Australia, it was shit. And it was about to get so much worse. 

Adam Cox: And did the depression and the change in the UK pound, and then how that was linked to the Australian pound and everything, and then the depression, is this one of the reasons why they changed to an Australian dollar? Or is that not 

Kyle Risi: related? I think it probably was related because, of course, they wanted to be their own sovereign.

But. When you have a currency that's completely under the control or influenced by another country's behavior, which then directly affects your economy, of course, you want your own currency, right? Change that, yeah. So, um, but I think that didn't really happen until the 1960s. I think 1966 that Australia finally got their own currency.

Right, okay. But yeah, things were shit for the Australians, all right? You got to feel sympathy for our brethren down under, all right? I feel sympathy. And the kangaroos . Which I'm gonna meet in one months time. I'm gonna put my hand in a kangaroo pouch. 

Adam Cox: Yeah, and then I think you're gonna lose your head when that happens. They're gonna tear it off.

Kyle Risi: Do you reckon? I reckon if I find a placid kangaroo, I reckon I could stick my hand in there. 

Adam Cox: don't know what 

Kyle Risi: you're after. I just want to know what it feels like. Is it warm?

Is it snuggly? Like, I don't know. I have this thing in my head that it smells a bit like, do you know what? Like when you're fingering your belly button and then you smell it and it smells like, Oh, that, that weird smell. That's what I think. a kangaroo pouch smells like. If you 

Adam Cox: are allowed near a kangaroo pouch, I have a feeling you're gonna get injured.

Kyle Risi: We'll have to see. I'm sure, I'm sure, I'm gonna do it. 

Adam Cox: Just check your travel insurance, we'll cover 

Kyle Risi: you for that. Yeah, stuck my hand in a kangaroo pouch. I can't wait, but Yeah, for those of you who don't know, we're going to Australia very soon, so I'm going to do it. It's the only thing I 

Adam Cox: want to do when I'm there.

If any of our Australian listeners know what it smells like. Or feels 

Kyle Risi: like, or if they've done it. Then write in. Yeah, I want to know, I want to know! Anyway, we've segwayed. Oh my god, I got so excited then. So, by all accounts, of course, as you know, like, things were tough for the Australians, and it was just about to get much worse because, uh, 1932 in Western Australia, in a region called Campion.

Now this is around about three hours east from Perth. Now here existed one of those soldier resettlement areas and for the first time since this settlement scheme started it finally looked like some farmers in the area were about to produce a pretty decent yield of wheat for that year.

but because of the government's broken promises to subsidize the price of wheat, the farmers decided as a collective that they were going to hold the wheat as hostage in order to force the government to deliver on their previous promise of the agreed 

Adam Cox: subsidies, right?

Right, okay, that's pretty, smart going, hey. You're not going to have this until you give us the money that you owed us for last year or 

Kyle Risi: whatever it is. Exactly, yeah. But the slight problem with that was that at that moment, the farmers hadn't actually harvested any of the wheat yet because it was still in the process of growing.

They just knew it was going to be a really good yield. Sure, okay. And so when the news that more than 20, 000 emus were headed directly for the Campion region in search of food and to begin the breeding season, the farmers were like, 20, 

Adam Cox: 000, do you remember in the Lion King, when you hear that sort of, that sound of the stampede in the distance?

And then you see the smoke clouds and stuff like that? I imagine the farmers going, Nooooo, and locking 

Kyle Risi: everything up. All in slow motion. With an Australian accent, they go, Nooooooooooooooo.

Adam Cox: It's not sure, they're not sure, 

Kyle Risi: but they say no, like, no, 

Adam Cox: no, true, true. And then, and then we just lost all our Australian listeners. So 

Kyle Risi: the Australian listeners, Australian farmers were like, oh shit, here comes a bunch of emus. Because, of course, this year was pegged to be the best yield to date, and the emus were on the way to ravage the wheat before the farmers were even able to use the wheat as bargaining chips to force the government to obviously pay those agreed subsidies.

Now, remember, many of these farmers were already dirt poor, right? So, for most of them, this would be the first profit they could actually make, which would then allow them to start advancing the local farming infrastructure to, like, improve future yields, get better irrigation, get fences, build roads, etc.

And if the farms did have fences, they were often really crappy, and the emus could just jump over them, because they can jump up to two meters in the air. Oh wow, 

Adam Cox: so they'd need a real high 

Kyle Risi: fence.

They would need a pretty substantial, strong fence. So the fact that there were 20, 000 emus headed straight for this region was really scary to a lot of these farmers. And so, when the emus did arrive, as feared, they started to get into the farmland and they started eating as much wheat as they possibly could.

they were stomping all over the crops, destroying the very little fences that they did have, which just then further allowed rabbits to access the fields, which then further decimated the crops as 

Adam Cox: well. So they teamed up with rabbits. Yes. They're 

Kyle Risi: allies. They're allies.

You help us, we help you. We'll shake our little cute little bunny butt. You break down a fence. Yeah. Yeah, it's a fair deal. So in some areas, like entire harvests had already been wiped out and the breeding season hadn't even really begun yet. So the farmers, who by the way, are all ex military, had no idea what to do.

The correct thing for them to do would be to reach out to the Ministry of Agriculture, right? But being inexperienced, they didn't even know to do that. And so while they lacked any know how in bureaucracy and government and politics, They did have experience. At war. In war. Right, I see. And, exactly.

 and also that typically when faced with an enemy, the best place to confront your enemy is on the front line, right? Yeah. So they decide to send a handful of the 5, 000 ex military farmers all the way down to the capital to meet the Ministry of Defence. This is a man called Sir George Pearce.

And when they get there, they specifically request military aid, arguing that the emus were so numerous and so destructive that the only way to deal with them Was with a machine gun? Oh my god. That 

Adam Cox: feels very excessive. It is. 

Kyle Risi: And at no point did the Minister of Defence go, hang on 20, 000 emu sounds like an agricultural issue. Yeah. Let me just put you through to them, oh please. Yeah, why did 

Adam Cox: no one think about that? They just went, oh that's a good idea yeah, here have some machine guns. 

Kyle Risi: Yep. Instead, they're like, Sir George Pierce said, yep, sounds sensible to me, I'll give you 10, 000 bullets and two of our top of the line Lewis machine guns that can fire 500 bullets in 60 seconds.

Hang 

Adam Cox: on, so they've got 10, 000 bullets, but there's 20, 000 emus, so I guess they think you only need to kill half of 

Kyle Risi: them. That's 

Adam Cox: assuming you're gonna shoot, every time you shoot, you're gonna hit an emu. Yeah. So, 

Kyle Risi: that doesn't feel like enough. This war feels unfunded.

Yeah, exactly, you're right. So there's 20, 000 emus on their way to Campion region, 10, 000 bullets, which essentially means, of course, one bullet for every two emus. Right. And a machine gun that fires 500 bullets in a single minute, right? Yeah. So you have to shoot 1, 000 emus with 500 shots in 60 seconds.

Wow, 

Adam Cox: I don't know what they were thinking, but sure, okay. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, so, as you can obviously sense, something's amiss here, right? This war 

Adam Cox: was doomed from the beginning. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, maybe my maths is off here, but something isn't adding up. But to all the farmers, they hear this and they believe, Yeah, this war's gonna be over real quick.

They also assign a high ranking military guy to lead the entire effort. This is a guy called, Major G. P. W. Meredith. I bet he 

Adam Cox: thought, this is 

Kyle Risi: Well, actually, he didn't know at this point, right? He's been assigned, but he doesn't know. 

Adam Cox: Right, okay. I just thought of him, like, stepping up, going, we need you for war, but he doesn't know what war yet.

He's like, yep, sure, I'll do it. And he arrives at the camp, and it's like, there's 20, 000 emus.. It's like, well, 

Kyle Risi: I mean, pretty much that's what happens. So, Major Meredith, he's from the seventh heavy battery of the Royal Australian Artillery. And apparently he was going to make sure this matter was dealt with very swiftly, according to Sir Pierce, who had just conscripted him into it.

So when Meredith finds out via memo, that he's been enlisted in this war. He's like, this is a joke, right? So he goes to meet with Sir Piers to get clarification and he's like, are you serious? Are you seriously asking me to do this? I've just come back from the greatest war of our generation and you want me to go kill some birds?

And like Sir Piers is like, uh huh. It's like you've got a week. You've got 

Adam Cox: a week. You've got a week. 

Kyle Risi: Wow, that's a deadline. So nope, it's all legit. So off Major Meredith goes to Western Australia where there is genuinely this belief that it's going to be over in a couple days. They're going to kill a bunch of emus and everything will be back to normal.

And so quite literally this is the first time in history that a country has declared war on an animal that is literally on their coat of arms and as their official national bird . 

Adam Cox: Well, they turned on themselves. They 

Kyle Risi: turned on themselves. And when you wage war against something that's sacred to your country, it's not going to end well, is 

Adam Cox: it?

Also, I think anyone that goes into war thinking be over in a couple of days, I think history suggests that never happens. 

Kyle Risi: Correct. Correct. I mean, weren't we told that the weapons of mass destruction war in Iraq was going to be over in a matter of weeks? Yeah. And what? War in Ukraine That was gonna be over like in a matter of months still going on like every year later. So you're right. Let's see what happens

So the way that Sir Pearce justifies this to Parliament and to the public is that he says that the soldiers would really benefit from this target practice in between wars.

I mean, what other war have you got planned? In between wars? In 

Adam Cox: between wars? Yeah, this is this is just a stopgap. 

Kyle Risi: Stopgap! World domination next! We're taking New Zealand! But yeah he also says that this would be a really good way to show the government's support for Western Australia who at the time were like super serious about seceding from the rest of Australia.

they even had a whole referendum. I had no idea. They had a whole referendum on the matter and overwhelmingly the vote was like, yes, we want to break away from the rest of the federation and become our own country. But when it was taken to the British Parliament, they were like, lol, no, this is not a legitimate referendum.

And, but either way, like, Canberra, was told by the British Parliament that they needed to do more to make sure that Western Australia Felt valued as part of the rest of the federation. 

Adam Cox: That's good, I think, because, that's, the right decision overall. But it's sad to think that, oh, we have to go ask the UK if we 

Kyle Risi: can do that.

Yeah, I know. It's like, it's left over from the kind of colonial era. 

Adam Cox: Mm. But then it was the 30s, so it still probably was pretty, we still had the empire then, 

Kyle Risi: didn't we? I think to a degree, I think, yeah. I don't know when Australia got their independence. Yeah. but who knows?

So, it just gets back to the people and the government. They all think, yep, that's a great idea. We're going to quell the West's kind of desire for secession. And we're going to give our soldiers some target practice. Brilliant. before we take over New Zealand.

So it gets the backing from the people and the government. And so in the spring of 1932, major Meredith reluctantly arrives with his soldiers in Campion, and they spend the weeks leading up to their arrival, preparing. They studied the terrain, they meticulously planned their attack. But on the day of their first battle, the weather's just a complete washout.

Mm-Hmm. . And so straight off the bat, they had to postpone. So they wait out the weather and then finally on the 2nd of November, they were finally able to return back to the front line and face the Emus, where they spot a group of around 50, just hanging out near a waterhole outside Campion.

So overnight the army set up the guns in the dead of night and the wait for sunrise, and as soon as they felt like they had a clear shot of the group, they opened fire Immediately as the first shots ring out, the emus just scatter, which means that the soldiers need to manoeuvre this really heavy machine gun in every single direction as to get kind of as many birds as they could.

With you, right? And then the machine gun is just like kind of blaring out for like five or six minutes. And after that, they kill a total of zero birds. 

Adam Cox: I mean, good in a way. So emu's instincts must be really good then, like as soon as their bullet is hitting the ground they must have just literally run 

Kyle Risi: away sort of thing.

Well I mean you see it like in those CCTV footages of like, people firing guns in public right? Mm. Instantly your instincts just kind of duck and then scattle or run, right? Yeah. But these birds just happen to be more agile and more, I don't know, flexible and quick I 

Adam Cox: guess? Yeah I guess they really underestimated just how quick they were, especially if they thought this heavy machine gun, which took ages to 

Kyle Risi: maneuver. That's exactly it. That's exactly what I wrote down here. They underestimated just how fast and agile these birds were, so you got a spot on. But it was only the first morning.

So they continued to track for more birds, and later that day they found another small flock of emus just hanging around a near farm. And in the second attack, they managed to kill around 20 birds. Aww. It's sad, isn't it? Bloodshed. But they waste a lot of bullets, alright? They're running, just keep an eye 

On that bullet count. Right. So what's really incredible is that there actually exists this archival footage of the reporting on location. Now remember, the government wanted to show everyone that they were actively supporting Western Australian farmers, right? after all, these farmers were national heroes as they were ex soldiers, right?

But also, they wanted to quell this issue of Western Australia wanting to secede from the rest of the country. So the government hire a filmmaker to shoot a newsreel documenting the process throughout this entire war. And they show this footage in local picture houses across the country.

Because remember, this is a time before television was commonplace. Throughout the country. So people didn't have televisions in the home and the only way they could really watch the news, other than obviously reading it in the newspaper, was at the cinema. So they made all this propaganda footage and the footage is exactly, As you imagine for this period like they use that classic pan Australian or pan kind of trans American Atlantic kind of English accent that you can probably visualize in your head and typically they would have the narrator speaking over the footage saying things like Are you ready for this?

Are you gonna do it in the accent? I'm gonna try. These are some fortunate farmers whose sweep crops have been trampled down by hordes of emus, but they're hopeful of getting rid of the pests at last. But they've never used this sort of scarifier before.

That's not bad actually. That's 

Adam Cox: possibly the best accent I think I've ever heard you do. Good because there's a lot more. Oh god. 

 But things are desperate, and it's a war to the finish this time.

Kyle Risi: The scouts of advancing armies have keen eyesight, and in order to get close to the main body, our lads have to do some real stalking, with the enemy watching events through their periscope, raised over heads of corn.

And then you hear like, a bunch of gunfire, and You see all this kind of archival footage of all these emus just scattering in every direction, and then the narrator says, And now they're retiring up to 40 miles an hour. It seems instead of the birds ruining the farmers, the tables have turned, and there'll be no more damage done here for many a day to come.

But the thing is though, this was so inaccurate, because two days later, On the 4th of November, Major Meredith gets word of a flock of a thousand emus heading towards a nearby farm. So again, against the clock, he wants to ensure that he gets as many, kind of, emus as possible to stop them from destroying the nearby farms.

So, They're out in the field, they're sitting tight, they're waiting to ambush the approaching emus, and again, when the birds get close enough, they open fire using the Lewis and machine guns. Bullets are literally spraying everywhere, but within seconds the gun just jams. But at that point, of course, the birds They've completely just scattered and they've zigzagged all the way through the bush and they've just gone.

And they 

Adam Cox: just wasted a whole load more bullets. 

Kyle Risi: They wasted a whole load more bullets and that was like a really valuable flock of a thousand emus that have just now gone. So yeah, in just those few minutes they'd used up like several hundred bullets and they only managed to kill twelve birds. So it's not looking good.

That's a few 

Adam Cox: emu burgers. 

Kyle Risi: I don't know if they're eating them, they should be. What a waste. Yeah, 

Adam Cox: that's what I was thinking. Why did they not take this opportunity to go, right, do you know what, our crops are ruined, but we could use this as We got 

Kyle Risi: meat! Exactly. We got burgers! I don't know, it's a good, it's a good shout, yeah.

And the thing is though, this was one of the most successful days. Oh no. Because they didn't see any more emus for the rest of the day, and they'd all just buggered off to a new area, so they had to go now find them. So they all thought that this would all be over in a few days, but they didn't count on the fact that these emus would be spread across a big area, 

Adam Cox: right?

Sure. So we've got, what was the guy that was leading this? Major Meredith. So he's on the side of the humans, and who was leading it from the emu 

Kyle Risi: side? Well, This is the thing.

So, two days later, on the 6th of November, Major Meredith received word that there were even more birds even further south. And these birds seemed a lot more placid and a lot easier to shoot, right? But by this point, many of the soldiers morale had taken like a major hit because they didn't feel great about the fact that they were being outsmarted by a bunch of dumb birds.

But it's literally like day two, like, come on guys. Yeah, it's like, 

Adam Cox: oh no, we're never going to win this. 

Kyle Risi: And we can see this through the media reports that were kind of on site. One soldier was quoted as saying, The emus are beginning to improve their understanding of the science of warfare. 

Adam Cox: They're plotting.

Kyle Risi: This is the exact language that they would use. It's so excessive. It's like, oh guys, this is not a war. And by all accounts, they were 100 percent correct because the emus had figured out, exactly how far away they need to stay away from humans to be out of range of the bullets. Wow. So they were really clever.

And another report says. Each pack seems to have its own leader. A black plume bird which stands fully at six feet high and keeps watch while his mates carry out their work of destruction.

Warning them of any approach. And then he goes. At the first suspicious sign, he gives the signal and a dozen of heads stretch up over the crop before taking fright. Starting a headlong stampede for the scrub. The leader always Remaining until his followers have reached safety.

Adam Cox: Wow, that's cool. I like that. Quick, run guys. I'll hold the 

Kyle Risi: fort. so Major Meredith retreats to re evaluate and comes back with a new strategy that he thinks is going to outsmart the birds. He decides that he's going to mount.

The lewis machine gun to the back of one of the trucks to make the machine gun more mobile, right? Okay. What do you think in there? 

Adam Cox: Um, I guess so they just moved the truck rather than people manually moving this machine gun Yeah, but then I don't know. a truck is quicker than a man on foot Mm hmm.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, But what they didn't take into account is that emus can run over 30 miles an hour and while obviously a truck can travel faster Than this remember they're in the bush on really uneven ground.

So it's not a comfortable ride and getting an accurate shot in this terrain at an increased speed just makes bullets just literally just spray over a wider area, making it even more difficult to get a direct hit on the birds. And also, remember, emus are really agile.

They dodge, they zigzag all over the place, right? So while mounting the gun on the back of the truck might have seemed like a good idea, it actually failed miserably because they struggled to keep up. And even if they could keep up They were only able to focus on one bird at a time. Yeah. So while the birds are scattering in the way they do, You have to be like a really, really good shot at aiming at these birds on this bumpy terrain.

But also operating the machine gun at the back of the truck was just impossible Because they kept getting flung out of the truck every time they hit a divot in the road. Oh God. So much so that, like I said, they just, yeah, they just got flung from the truck. Wow. This is, 

Adam Cox: it just, it just feels like a disaster.

It's like a Benny Hill skit. It really is, yeah. 

Kyle Risi: but it was also on this day that the soldiers get their first casualty of this war because one of the farmers in the convoy Decided that he was going to take the initiative and try and crash his own truck into one of the slower emus That had broken away from the main flock But when he hit the emu it crashed through the truck's windscreen and got his head tangled in the steering wheel making the driver lose control Causing him to run off the road and completely destroying one of the precious few fences that actually existed in the area Making the entire problem worse for everyone!

Adam Cox: So like, he crashes into that, so Does he survive? 

Kyle Risi: Oh yeah, he's, the guy's fine. 

Adam Cox: But then this, uh, fence is like broken down and then all the emus just run in and dodge him. 

Kyle Risi: Ooh, wheat! 

Adam Cox: Wow, that was a smart emu that got stuck in that stairwell. Like a kamikaze emu.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it boys, I'm gonna take the sacrifice. We love you Jimmy!

So by the end of the day, all the soldiers and the farmers are just left completely frustrated and deflated, realizing that they hadn't even dented the population of emus whatsoever. 

Adam Cox: well, maybe down by about 50 by the sound of things at the 

Kyle Risi: moment. Not much, is it? So another two days go by, and on the 8th of November,

the press coverage has gone from hopeful to just ridiculing the war effort altogether. And reports start emerging what a farce this entire thing has become. So much so, that they have to discuss this in the House of Representatives. Where they drag the Minister of Defence into the chambers to explain like what the fuck's going on.

And he just can't explain it at all. Like he's just Yeah, I should have contacted the minister of agriculture, maybe like giving them machine guns wasn't the best thing to do, 

Adam Cox: yeah. All the damage that we've caused. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. And so the government decided that they're just going to withdraw the troops and they put an end to the war immediately.

And the way that they break the news to the public was by releasing a press release that literally said, The EMU command has evidently ordered a guerrilla tactic and has split themselves into hundreds of smaller units, making it impossible for the military, equipment, and the army to defend themselves.

Adam Cox: They're that cunning. 

Kyle Risi: So Major Meredith, he tries really hard to defend himself and also his men, of course.

He wants to at least maintain some degree of dignity by explaining just how tough the emus were to kill. And he says that many carried mortal wounds up to a distance of half a mile. And they were still standing? 

Adam Cox: So, wow, that's a good going.

I didn't realize they were so 

Kyle Risi: hardy. Yeah. So he says that if we had a military division with the bullet carrying capacity, like inside their bodies that these birds had, then they would be able to face any army in the world. Clearly talking about the New Zealanders. And like, they can face machine guns with the invulnerability of like literal tanks and he describes them as Zulus who even dum dum bullets couldn't stop, so by the way, dum dum bullets are bullets that like when they enter in your body, they just kind of, they just expand and explode essentially.

 so yeah, Major Meredith was telling the world that emus were unimpacted by their bullets and that they were just very fast learners who figured out how to form these little small formations of like military groups yeah and yeah and good luck to the rest of you if you want to take them on then fine but i'm washing my hands of all of this And I'm getting the hell out of here.

Like, just 

Adam Cox: build a really big fence and just hope for the best. No one thinks of that! 

Kyle Risi: No 

Adam Cox: one thinks of that. Could they not just use the money that they invested in this army just to like, improve defences? 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, they can do. But Adam, it's going to take them 20 years to figure that out. Okay. 

Adam Cox: Really? Is that what they Oh, 

Kyle Risi: jeez.

This is why you're 

Adam Cox: straight. This is why they're off to a slow start.

Kyle Risi: And the thing is, this wasn't just talk because There was another incident where someone had also hit an emu with their truck and when they recovered its body They did find that it had been walking around as if nothing was wrong With five bullets sprayed into its body and that wasn't the norm There were loads of these emus out there that just had loads of bullets inside them and they were just unfazed by it No way.

Adam Cox: they're like Wolverine 

Kyle Risi: So These birds are tough dude, so the farmers figure out that the only real effective way to guarantee. An effective kill is to either shoot an emu through the back of its head or through its mouth while its beak is open.

That must be 

Adam Cox: very difficult to do because their heads are quite small in comparison to their bodies. Exactly! They're like these little targets! And all they need to do is just duck, am I right? Yeah, 

Kyle Risi: exactly! As soon as they hear their gunshot they're like, meh!

So the first round of the war is called off but then within just a few days on the 12th of November They declare war again because the farmers are saying like, like, look government, we really need your help. We don't know what to do. so the defence minister stupidly just redeploys against the government's kind of wishes, another round of soldiers and again convinces Major Meredith just to have one more go.

But this time they're going to go at the emu sniper style. And this works to a degree with some days being more successful than others, but still they're only managing to kill around a hundred birds in a week.

And now they've used up all 10, 000 bullets and they've only killed a thousand birds. Right. Which means that they're wasting on average 10 bullets per bird. 

Adam Cox: That's not a good success, 

Kyle Risi: right? It's a, it's a, it's shit. So back in Parliament, it just goes off and the government is like, we've wasted way too much money and way too much resources on this impossible war, and they're like, impossible war, impossible war, and they decide that they're not willing to give them any more money so they just agree this is it, this is once and for all, no more.

And Sir Piers is not allowed to kind of like send any more troops. But then someone brings up in Parliament whether or not the soldiers should receive award medals for their service. And of course Parliament just erupts with laughter.

Another minister says it should be the emus who we should give the medals to because like effectively they've won literally every single battle that we've waged against them. So the war was just over and the soldiers were then just withdrawn, and they all come back to their home counties with their tails between their legs, and the Australian military is literally the laughingstock of Australia.

Can you 

Adam Cox: imagine? what happens if that is some people's only war, right? Say they missed World War One, they didn't get involved in World War Two, but they're like, oh, did you serve? It's yep. In the emus wars. But I think, I 

Kyle Risi: was just about to say that's the reason why they've called it the great emu war.

To make those people that have only served in one war feel like they're like It was something. It was something.

So then from that point on the emus just kept coming back year after year and kept doing as much damage but the farmers they just kept begging for help. They just kept lobbying for more soldiers and weapons right up to 1943 when the farmers finally came up with a new proposal. They suggested that the government permit the Air Force to drop a series of bombs onto the EMUs.

But of course, they said LOL, fuck no. 

Adam Cox: BOMBS! Let's just bomb this place to crap. 

Kyle Risi: The thing that eventually started to work was the introduction of a bounty scheme, which was open to every single Australian in the country, where basically they would pay four pence for every emu beak that anyone was able to bring back and then six pence for every egg this was the thing that kind of finally worked because they estimated that they were able to overcome more than 300, 000 emus.

Over the course of just a few years, but I think this was across all of Australia. Right. 

Adam Cox: And that's, I guess, a much more humane way of just taking the eggs. Although it does feel like you're just taking their babies. Yeah, but At least you're not like I wonder if they're going to eat the eggs. Possibly.

Breakfast 

Kyle Risi: for everyone. Yeah. How many eggs do you reckon are in an emu? Because I know growing up we always saw there's like 24, equivalent of 24 eggs, regular eggs, inside an ostrich egg. Okay. So I would guess an emu egg might be like 12, 13. But then, in 1953, after the effects of the depression were starting to wane, they decided that they were going to erect a nice big fence.

And that worked. It kept the emus out once and for all. so it took Australia 20 years to finally get a solution to the problem of the emus. They'd waged an entire war. Propose dropping bombs, and then someone's like, wait a second, should we build a fence?

And That's crazy. 

Adam Cox: What? that's the first thing that Donald Trump did with the US, was just build a wall. Just build a wall. 

Kyle Risi: Did that work? 

Adam Cox: I don't know. if it did, to be honest. 

Kyle Risi: I mean, you see people like crossing all the time, like they build this giant wall with these huge gaps in it, and you just see these migrants coming through, squeezing through the bars.

Yeah, it's like, hmm. 

Adam Cox: But yeah, no, that's crazy. So the actual battle on the battlefield, I guess you could say, was about a month. Yeah. But they still had problems with emus for 20 odd years. Yeah. Wow. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah. And that is the story of the Great Emu War of 1932. 

Adam Cox: Wow. That's hilarious. Do you know what?

It's interesting now, we started with all the latest things about, pigeon spies. Yeah. And now we've found out that emus are really hardy at war. Mm hmm. Why 

Kyle Risi: has no one Enlisted a bird army? Yeah, 

Adam Cox: clearly. God. Stick some, I don't know, explosives or cameras on them and let them run wild during a war.

Yeah. 

Kyle Risi: And the thing is, it makes sense that they're hardy because, they're essentially surviving dinosaurs. Mm. They survived. Millions of years. And a meteor. And ice ages. Yeah. It's like, pah! Your bullet's no match for me! I witnessed the meteor of 65 million years ago! I've seen THING man.

You think you scare me? You think your tank scares me? Come on! 

Adam Cox: Come on! Yeah. Cool. That's like a funny 

Kyle Risi: story. Good. Should we run the outro? Let's do it. And so we come to the end of another episode of The Compendium, an assembly of fascinating and intriguing things. If you found today's episode both fascinating and intriguing, then subscribe and leave us a review.

But please don't just stop there, schedule your episodes to download automatically as soon as they become available. We're on Instagram at The Compendium Podcast, so stop by and say hi, or visit us at our home on the web at thecompendiumpodcast. com. Remember, we release every Tuesday. And until then, remember, sometimes the most feathered foes can leave the mightiest of militaries with egg on their face.

Adam Cox: Very good. See you next time. See ya.