The Great Emu War

I referenced this war a few times last post. I feel like it is only right that it be my first history post here. The "war" lasted about a month and the emu's ended up winning it. Yeah you read that right, a month long war against animals and the animals won.

In the early 1930's a lot of ex-soldiers went to Western Australia to grow wheat to try to make some money. So many people were doing this that the price of wheat ended up dropping. This coupled with the government not doing what they were supposed to, created a lot of tensions between the people and the government. This happened around the time that the emu's were migrating back inland after their mating seasons. The farmlands happened to be a prime piece of land for the returning birds, so they took it over (because why not?). The farmers complained to the government, and then the government sent soldiers with big guns to solve the problem. The general that accompanied the soldiers was named G.P.W. Meredith. Now Meredith was a smart guy. He knew that to beat the emu's he couldn't just charge at them and shoot them. So he ordered an ambush at a nearby dam. The soldiers hid in the brush with their guns and once the emu's got up close, they fired everything they had. Or at least they would have if the guns hadn't jammed after killing about 10 of them. The emu's spread out and no one saw anymore.... until the next day. A few days later in his report back to the government, they shot 2,500 rounds of ammunition and killed about 100 of the 20,000 birds. One of the most hilarious comments was this "The machine-gunners' dreams of point blank fire into serried masses of Emus were soon dissipated. The Emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month" With more of the great tactics from earlier, the great general Meredith ended up killing 1,000 emus with about 10,000 rounds of ammo.

Even after this grand victory against the emu's, they came back a few years later during 1934. They came again in 43, and once more in 48. And that is the story of the time Australia had a war against 20,000 emu and lost.