Australia's military fought a war against 20,000 birds and lost
In late 1932, Australia's military deployed soldiers armed with machine guns to cull a horde of 20,000 crop-destroying emus in Western Australia. The birds scattered quickly, making target practice nearly impossible and jamming heavy weapons. After firing thousands of rounds with minimal effect on the bird population, the military withdrew, leaving farmers to build better fences instead.
Soldiers, Wheat, and an Unforeseen Migration
Following the First World War, the Australian government established soldier settlement schemes to help demobilised veterans transition back into civilian life. Thousands of British and Australian ex-servicemen were allocated marginal farming plots in the semi-arid wheat belt of Western Australia, including the Campion and Walgoolan districts. The transition was arduous. The onset of the Great Depression in 1929 collapsed global commodity prices, and while the federal government initially urged farmers to expand wheat production with promises of subsidies, those financial supports largely failed to materialise. Farmers found themselves operating at a loss in an unforgiving climate.
The situation deteriorated sharply in October 1932 when an estimated 20,000 emus arrived in the region. Emus regularly migrate inland from coastal areas after their breeding season, and they found the newly cleared agricultural land ideal. Cultivated fields offered standing crops and readily accessible water from stock tanks and irrigation dams. As the birds fed, they decimated vast tracts of standing wheat and trampled heavy boundary fences, opening pathways for invasive rabbits to enter and inflict additional crop damage.
The Decision to Deploy Machine Guns
Faced with financial ruin and unable to contain the sheer number of birds with standard rifles, a delegation of settler-farmers approached the federal Minister for Defence, Sir George Pearce. Having served in the First World War, many of the farmers were familiar with the destructive power of automatic weapons and requested the deployment of machine guns. The government viewed the request favourably, reasoning that the operation would provide practical target practice for the military while demonstrating federal support for struggling veterans.
The terms of the operation required the Western Australian government to cover the cost of troop transport, while the local farmers agreed to provide food, accommodation, and ammunition costs. The military dispatched Major G.P.W. Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery, commanding two soldiers—Sergeant S. McMurray and Gunner J. O'Halloran—equipped with two Lewis automatic machine guns and an allocation of 10,000 rounds of ammunition.
The First Engagements at Campion
The military operation was initially delayed by heavy rainfall, which scattered the birds across a wider area. Operations commenced in early November 1932 near Campion. When a flock of approximately 50 emus was spotted, local settlers attempted to herd the birds toward the hidden Lewis guns. Instead of maintaining a cohesive mass, the emus split into smaller groups and fled at high speed. The gunners fired several bursts, but due to the extreme range and the agility of the targets, only a small number of birds were killed.
Two days later, the troops set up an ambush near a local water dam, where a flock of over 1,000 emus approached their position. The gunners held their fire until the birds were within point-blank range. However, shortly after opening fire, one of the Lewis guns jammed. The sudden noise panicked the flock, causing them to scatter in all directions before significant casualties could be inflicted. Only a dozen birds were confirmed dead from what should have been a devastating strike.
Guerrilla Tactics and Technological Limits
As the operation progressed southward, Major Meredith attempted to adapt his strategy to the open terrain. In one instance, the team mounted a Lewis gun on the back of a truck to chase running flocks across the paddocks. The tactic failed completely: the vehicle could not match the emus' speed over rough ground, and the violent jolting made it impossible for the gunner to aim or fire a single accurate shot.
The soldiers quickly realised that the emu's biology and behaviour made it an exceptionally resilient adversary. Emus could run at sustained speeds approaching 50 kilometres per hour, and their distributed, non-hierarchical flocking patterns meant that each bird scattered independently under fire. Major Meredith noted with frustration that individual emus were capable of absorbing multiple direct hits from heavy-calibre rounds while continuing to sprint without showing immediate signs of distress, leading observers to comment on the birds' uncanny ability to withstand modern military tactics.
Parliamentary Debate and the Second Attempt
By November 8, roughly a week after the campaign began, the expedition had expended roughly 2,500 rounds of ammunition with minimal confirmed kills—press and local accounts estimated the tally between 50 and a few hundred birds. The operation attracted severe ridicule in the Australian federal parliament and negative coverage across international newspapers. Facing intense public scrutiny, Minister Pearce ordered an immediate withdrawal of military personnel and weapons.
The respite was brief. Emus continued their relentless foraging across the wheat fields, and the Premier of Western Australia, James Mitchell, lobbied hard for military intervention to resume. Base commanders argued that the first attempt had inflicted more casualties than critics admitted, and Pearce approved a second deployment under Meredith's command on November 12. During this second phase, the gunners achieved greater coordination, maintaining a rate of roughly 100 kills per week until Meredith was recalled in December. The final official report claimed 986 confirmed kills from 9,860 rounds expended, alongside an estimate of wounded birds that died later.
The Shift to Bounties and Exclusion Fences
Although the military claimed improved efficiency during the second deployment, the overall impact on the regional emu population was negligible. Western Australian wheat growers requested military machine gun detachments again in 1934, 1943, and 1948, but the federal government repeatedly refused to intervene.
Instead, the government fell back on economic and physical deterrents. The state's long-standing bounty system, which paid hunters for emu beaks, proved far more effective than military campaigns, resulting in tens of thousands of claims processed within single years. Over the following decades, the construction and maintenance of extensive exclusion barrier fences became the primary method to prevent large-scale emu migrations into agricultural heartlands, cementing the conclusion that mechanical barriers and financial incentives were far better suited to wildlife control than military force.
Key takeaways
•The 1932 Emu War was sparked by 20,000 migrating emus devastating marginal wheat crops farmed by First World War veterans in Western Australia.
•The Royal Australian Artillery deployed soldiers armed with Lewis machine guns, but the emus' speed, resilience, and scattered flocking behaviour rendered heavy automatic fire largely ineffective.
•After two campaigns expending nearly 10,000 rounds of ammunition for under 1,000 confirmed kills, the military withdrew, leaving future control to state bounty systems and exclusion fences.