Let's Learn About... #3 - The Great Emu War (Australia, 1932)

Charlotte 0:14
Hello, and welcome to a new episode of 'Let's Learn About'. This is a show where we teach you everything you need to know... well, some stuff about what you need to know, about some random topics that we - in this case, for me anyway - we learn about ourselves five minutes before we record.

Ellie 0:33
Because sometimes people have lives and you just don't have time.

Charlotte 0:39
Surprisingly! Yeah, I'm surprised I do have a life at the moment, but I've never have this before. This is new.

Ellie 0:45
Hey, it seems to work in your favour from the little snippet you told me before we started recording.

Charlotte 0:49
Yeah. So, shall we? This is your turn this time. My episode last time, if you haven't listened, was all about Saturn, my favourite planet, but this time we are going off in a completely different direction again. So let's get straight into it. What are you going to teach us today?

Ellie 1:06
Well we are travelling, not into the depths of outer space, but around to the other side of the world to a little country I like to call Australia. Have you ever been to Australia?

Charlotte 1:27
I haven't.

Ellie 1:28
Go! Thoroughly recommended.

Charlotte 1:30
I'll go tomorrow.

Ellie 1:31
Oh yeah, do it! If you have a spare £2000 pounds for a plane ticket, it's thoroughly recommended. No, we are not just travelling through space, we are also travelling back in time. Our story begins in 1932, in the wonderful country that is Australia. Now Australia at the time was not doing so great, as pretty much the rest of the world wasn't really doing very great at the moment, because it was during the era of the Great Depression. So it's less Sydeny Opera House and Neighbours, and more living on farms and struggling to survive.

Charlotte 2:10
Such fun.

Ellie 2:11
Such fun! Happy times all around. So a lot of Australians at the time were living on homestead - so they were like farms - and they were paid by the government to grow crops, specifically wheat in this case, in Western Australia. To anyone that knows anything about Australia, it's mainly made up of sand, and that doesn't provide the most fertile soil in the world. So safe to say they were slightly struggling to actually grow anything, and when they did manage to grow stuff, they were encountering a bit of a pest. Now, these pests weren't, you know, a pest that could be sorted out with a spray or a trap or anything along those lines because - gentle viewers, and Charlotte - these pests were emus.

Charlotte 3:06
What?

Ellie 3:07
Oh yeah, and I'm not just talking a couple emus here. No, no, no, no, we are talking in the region of about 20,000 emus!

Charlotte 3:19
Whoa!!

Ellie 3:19
Now these emus usually migrated to the coast after mating season, but suddenly it's the 1930s and they've just found that Western Australia is covered in all this yummy wheat. And what if a simple fence to a six foot tall walking stilt bird of pure muscle and angry feathers? It is nothing! They are kicking down those fences and they are eating all the wheat, and then whatever is left is being eaten by rabbits or something because the emus have left giant holes in the fencing.

Charlotte 3:31
This is making me want to be a emu, it sounds fun! It sounds like a right laugh.

Ellie 3:58
It's literally like they discovered a McDonald's, after closing time on a Saturday night, but messier! So they were basically eating, pooping and ravaging all these farmers crops, and again, being quite big birds, it's not like you can just put a scarecrow in the ground and make them go away. These birds are here to stay. So the farmers went to the Australian Government and we're like "Help us! We are poor and dying and we can't grow any food". So as governments do, they take a good hard look at the crisis situation that their citizens are in, and they judge the best way in which they can use their money to help rectify the situation. You know, remember it's the Great Depression so money's not exactly rampant, and so they really, really have to spend it wisely. Can you guess at what they might do?

Charlotte 4:12
At this point, I didn't... I didn't predict emus. So I feel like absolutely anything can happen.

Ellie 5:06
Oh, just wait. This is but the beginning, Charlotte

Charlotte 5:12
I'm so excited!

Ellie 5:14
Oh, yeah, hold on to your emus people! So, instead of giving what little money that they had to, you know, the Minister of Agriculture - the guy whose job it is to oversee farms and farm lands and growing crops - they hand it over to the Minister of Defence, as in the guy who controls the military.

Charlotte 5:39
Okay?

Ellie 5:40
Now I would have really loved to have been a fly on the wall of the meeting where they decided that they are, essentially, going to war with the Emu's. Yep.

Charlotte 5:56
This already just needs to be a film. I can just imagine. I just really want to see them re-enact the meeting.

Ellie 6:02
I know right? How, how has a major studio, or even Netflix, not pick this up as a story? It's one of my favourites. This whole saga is like one of my favourite stories from history because it's so ridiculous, and yet so something that humans would do. Oh dear. So yes, back to them deciding to declare war on the emus, the great predator of humans. They hire a guy called G. P W. Meredith, and in all his infinite wisdom, he decides that emus can be taken out with no more than two men, two lightweight machine guns, and about 10,000 rounds of ammunition. Remember - 20,000 emus! And they thought that they can use 10,000 - literally half - the amount of bullets.

Charlotte 7:07
And two men.

Ellie 7:08
And two men. But with machine guns, so you know, yeah, great plan! So their first assault happens on 2nd November 1932 in the town of Campion, where they find about a group of 50 emus. I think... what's a group of emus? Is it a mob?

Charlotte 7:29
I will find out, I need to find out.

Ellie 7:30
Or a flock? I mean, they're birds... a stampede?

Charlotte 7:34
A mob. It is a mob, you're correct.

Ellie 7:37
It IS a mob! Woohoo!! So they encounter a mob of about 50 emus. So the men, they set up, they took their spots, they aimed their machine guns, and they fired! And all the emus scattered and they ran away. And not only that, but they weren't actually in range of the birds first place! They were too far away in the initial round of gunfire. So between them a) being fairly difficult targets to hit because they're moving and b) hard to hit them anyway because they're not close enough, they only managed to kill - and this is a direct quote - "a number" of the birds.

Charlotte 7:40
Right?

Ellie 7:41
No specificity in this, they just killed "a number".

"A number". Could be one.

Could be one, could be zero, that is also a number! But apparently they kill a number of the birds, and we can safely say that Round One goes to the emus. Round Two takes place about two days later, where the major and the two gunman ambush about 1000 emus that are spotted near a dam - so slightly bigger mob this time. Learning their lesson from that last time they get a bit closer to the emus; hide in the scrub, hunker down, get a bit more in range of these birds, open fire... And their guns jam. They're not having the best luck here.

Charlotte 9:08
No.

Ellie 9:09
So they only managed to kill about 12 of the birds before the guns jam, and again the rest of the mob scatter, and are not seen again for the rest of the day. Emus 2, Humans 0.

Charlotte 9:24
I'm rooting for the Emus at this point, honestly.

Ellie 9:26
I know! Same. It's like, go emus! Just let them have Australia, it is now theirs. But this doesn't deter them; so Round Three happens a couple days later, and they decide to move further south of Western Australia because apparently the birds in the south are "tamer". Again, direct quote here - "southern birds are more tame than the northwestern birds" so apparently they're going to be easier kill.

Charlotte 9:54
Right, okay.

Ellie 9:55
What they decided to do this time, because they've noticed a trend that the birds tend to run away when they're being attacked, is that they mount that machine guns onto the back of a truck, and decid to drive after the emus, chase them down and shoot them while they move... except for the fact that now they're not only trying to shoot a moving target, but they're shooting the moving target from the back of a moving object which, in the 1930s, the suspension on that truck... I'm not gonna say it's the best.

Charlotte 10:30
Yeah, doesn't sound like an ideal situation here.

Ellie 10:34
No, and given to that, that the desert in Western Australia - not the smoothest of terrain? So between all those factors, they're pretty much shooting like *excellent imitation of flailing and jiggling about* Just imagine a lot of bouncing up and down, but with a machine gun, trying to shoot a moving target from the back of a moving object... they can barely see straight let alone shoot straight. Oh my word. And also - and I had to look this up - because at this point I was like, "hang on, are emus easy to kill?" It's not! It's not; a fully grown emu can take about three bullets to the torso and still run. They are not the easiest birds to kill. About the only way to really get them, is to get them in the head, but the heads the smallest part of their body!

Charlotte 11:28
It's tiny, yeah.

Ellie 11:29
I don't even know what they thought that they were going to win this.

Charlotte 11:34
So I assume this is another one up to the emus?

Ellie 11:37
Little bit, a little bit. And at this point they are about six days into the war - because this is still a war - they've got through about a quarter of their ammunition, have killed somewhere in the region of 20 to 200 emus, depending on who you believe, and in Major Merediths official report, he states that his men "had suffered no casualties". Because, you know, that was clearly the most important thing to him at this point, is the fact that he still had his two men. They were still... they were still there. And to top it all off, they are getting absolutely murked in the press, because these guys were so sure that their victory was secure before they even started this, that they brought in a camera crew to film them taking down the emus. So these guys now have footage of their failure, which is making its way not only around Australia, but around the world.

Charlotte 12:42
Oh my God!

Ellie 12:45
So basically they're taking an absolute pounding in the press, because they're being defeated by giant birds essentially. And so with all of this Major Meredith, after six days of war, decisively - the only sensible thing he can do - is withdraw his troops. So him and his two men pack up their guns, and they go back to the Australian government who, and this is where I think Ozzy humour - which is some of the best humour in the entire world, and was around even then - the Australian government actually considered giving the emus medals for winning three out of three rounds against the humans. And I wish... I wish I could say this was the end of the Great Emu War, but it's not. About four days later - so this only takes place, this entire war takes place in the span of about two months. The Greatest War in history has just happened, the First World War has just happened - so four days later, the farmers are like "Hey guys, the emus is still eating our stuff".

Charlotte 14:00
"You haven't done anything".

Ellie 14:00
"You haven't done anything, you've probably made it worse, the emus are now angry and celebrating their victory by eating what little remained of our crops". So attempt number two; they decided to bring back this same guy, this Major Meredith, they decided to bring him back to try again.

Charlotte 14:01
Him with his great track record.

Ellie 14:27
I really want to know what he did to warrant him being given this post, because clearly it was nothing good. So they decided that they were going to learn and, again this is another direct quote, the emus apparently "had guerrilla tactics", which assured their victory the first time round. Apparently learning from the emus tactics, which is basically to split up into groups and run away from the gunfire, they decide to take the war back into the field, actually managed to stick it out for about a month and basically just machine gunned whichever emus they can find. And after a month they're killcount, with their 10,000 bullets, is about 1000 emus.

Charlotte 15:20
Right?

Ellie 15:21
They started with 20,000 emus. They have killed less than one... hang on, wait, my maths is really rubbish... I want to say they killed about 1% of the emus! Not even that, someone checked my maths for me. I'm not sure, I failed percentages at school. But yeah, they decide that that this it; they have done their jobs! Victory is secured! The emus have been defeated... in my opinion, the emus won the war fair and square, I will not have it any other way. And so ends the tale of the Great Emu War of 1932 - Emus 4, Humans 0, and whoever said that they were stupid birds are incredibly wrong in my opinion.

Charlotte 16:14
Yeah! So what did they do in the end with the rest of them?

Ellie 16:19
Oh in the end? The government decided that they were just going to give a bounty to whoever could kill an emu. They basically went out to the Australian citizens and went, "if you can bring us to the head of an emu, we will give you this bounty". Which of course, people were like "whoo, money!" And they managed to get about... I think they said, over the course of the next couple years, about 50,000 emus were culled.

Charlotte 16:44
Whoa!

Ellie 16:45
So the entire Australian population did a better job over the span of a couple years than the Australian military did in the span of a month and a half to two months. Yeah, so if in doubt, get an Aussie farmer to do the job for you. Or maybe the Australian Government should just hire the emus to be their tanks or something, because apparently they can take a bullet and still keep going.

Charlotte 17:14
That sounds amazing!

Ellie 17:16
And that is one of my favourite moments in history.

Charlotte 17:20
I'm so glad I know that now. I feel like I haven't lived up until this point, because I haven't known that story.

Ellie 17:27
I know right? I tell everyone; if people don't know about the Great Emu War - which is its' official title, that is the name of the war, is the Great Emu War, and just the sheer fact that humans went to war with emus is amazing. And know you know!

Charlotte 17:46
I don't quite know what to say now.

Ellie 17:49
I have rendered you speechless, my work is done.

Charlotte 17:52
You have! I will never see emus the same, they're gonna be incredible now.

Ellie 17:57
I know, exactly. And if you liked my tale of the Great Emu War of Australia, let us know on our social media channels! Or alternatively, if there is another weird war or something in history that you think that we should know about, to help extend our knowledge, let us know. I'd be fascinated to look more into it.

Charlotte 18:19
Same!

Ellie 18:21
I really got you there, haven't I?

Charlotte 18:25
I feel like I'm now going be telling everyone, that's going to be my new story to tell everyone. I mean, I feel like that's the reason why we started this podcast in the first place, is because we're the kind of people that love to have these weird and wonderful stories and facts to tell people. That's the whole reason this podcast exists! Because now we can learn all of these things, and we can just make people dumbfounded by our wonderful stories.

Ellie 18:50
Exactly, and trust me, it doesn't get the same reaction when you pull it out at a quiet moment at dinner party, just gets you weird looks and "why did you know that?"

Charlotte 18:59
Yeah, so have fun everyone, going to tell people the story of the Great Emu War of Australia!

Ellie 19:06
And if you want to know more about it, we're going to put the links to all the places that I found the research in the footnotes of our episode. So head over to our website, look for this episode, and you'll see the footnotes down the bottom.

Charlotte 19:19
Yeah, and that's the same for every episode. We'll put all the notes there so if you want to learn more you can go and carry on learning. The website is learnaboutpod.com, and that's the same on our social media as well. We're on Twitter and Instagram, and that's also @learnaboutpod.

Ellie 19:34
And also, did you tell them the good news? Did you tell them the good news about Spotify?

Charlotte 19:39
Oh, no, I didn't! We are now on spot on Spotify, we're now streaming on Spotify, which is super exciting. So if you go to learnaboutpod.com/Spotify you'll be taken straight there where you can subscribe on there, and you can listen on any of your devices, and I'll be working very soon on getting it on some other platforms as well. So if you're an iTunes or Apple podcasts user then it will hopefully be available for you to listen to on there soon as well. But right now, you can either listen to it on our website or on Spotify.

Ellie 20:19
Let us know what you think! it feels really weird saying this, I've never had to say this before - do they do rating systems on Spotify? Because if they do, let us know.

Charlotte 20:29
I can't remember if you can review on Spotify, I don't think you can. You can review on iTunes, so as soon as it's up on iTunes I'll let you know. So if you're loving the podcast, you can go over there and give it a review. But you can also just, if you want to inflate our egos a little bit, you can head to our website and just send us a message if you're enjoying it. Or the comments are also up - on each of the episodes on our website you can comment directly on each episode. So yeah, if you want to kind of share your thoughts on a specific episode, then you can head to the website and you can comment on each specific episode page. We'd love to know your thoughts about every episode. Obviously, when you start something brand new like this, it can be hard to kind of judge what people think of it.

Ellie 21:16
So we need to know if we're going in the right direction people; if this is actually something, or whether we're just using it for our own benefit, essentially.

Charlotte 21:29
So if you're enjoying it, then do any of those things and we'd appreciate it a lot. We will see you next week for another episode, and I'm excited to tell the story of an incredible... I'd say an incredible woman, it's kind of a woman who just has such a funny story, but it's also kind of sad, but not in a... yeah, I won't say too much.

Ellie 21:52
Shhhhh, spoilers!

Charlotte 21:53
Yeah, if you like fun stories about people in history, then look out next week for my episode, and that's out.

Ellie 22:02
But until then, keep learning people, and we will see you next week. Bye!

Charlotte 22:06
Bye!