So Bizarre
A podcast that explores the creepiest and weirdest stories in history. Hosted by Nicole Mercedes and Bianca Bafitis.
So Bizarre
The Great Emu War
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Wars are absolutely no laughing matter. But perhaps there is one exception. In 1932 Australia went to war with the native Emus (because of course they did), and we’re not going to spoil it for you or tell you who won, but there is zero doubt that you will be… Emused.
We will not be apologizing for that pun, deal with it.
This is So Bizarre, a podcast where we find the weirdest stories from history and share them with you. I'm Bianca. I'm Nicole. Let's get started.
SPEAKER_00Hi Bianx. Hi Nicole. How are you? I am well. How are you? Also well. Excellent. We're doing so good by being well. I will take well. Well is basically a nine at this point.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well is a 12 for me personally.
SPEAKER_00So okay. Good on us. Yeah, good on us. Dude, I have been like researching this and laughing out loud for like a few weeks. And I'm so excited. And if you've already heard about this, okay.
SPEAKER_01I'll pretend. Don't worry. No, no, no, don't pretend. Don't pretend.
SPEAKER_00Because there's no way you've you know a lot about this. Okay, I'm excited. Okay. Are you ready for a story about the Great Emu War of 1932?
SPEAKER_01No. Like an emu, like the bird?
SPEAKER_00Of course. Do you know a lot of other emus?
SPEAKER_01You know? You haven't heard of it. You don't know all my life.
SPEAKER_00You haven't heard about it.
SPEAKER_01No, I have not heard about it.
SPEAKER_00Excellent.
SPEAKER_01I know, I'm excited.
SPEAKER_00So this is a real thing. I want to press it. Sounds like it's not real, but it is very real.
SPEAKER_01Oh did they ride them? Okay, no, I'll shut up. You go.
SPEAKER_00You're just not gonna guess. Nope. Okay. Um, because it's very it's literal.
SPEAKER_01This isn't some metaphor like metaphorical metaphorical emu that lives in all of us.
SPEAKER_00No, this is got it. Um, guess where this takes place? Australia? Yes. All of the emus are in Australia. Really? Well, all the wild ones at least. Huh. Um, okay, so it takes place specifically in Western Australia in 1932. For those who don't know, Western Australia is Australia's largest state. Do you know the capital? Why am I? Is it wait, hold on, I think I might know it. Is it um Perth? Woo! Woo! Guys, Bianca has traveled in Australia, so everyone needs to know that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I didn't go to Western Australia. No one has. No, it's very far.
SPEAKER_00I have only been to Melbourne. All right, enough bragging. So let's dive in. Up until the late 1800s, that area had some of the richest biodiversity in the world. So, like forests, wetlands, huge eucalyptus woodlands, lots of water sources. Gorgeous. Do you think that lasted? After World War I, large numbers of veterans were given land by the Australian government to farm. So, naturally, they cleared huge areas for wheat production and livestock. And now it's a desert. No. Well, I I don't know the percentage, but a lot of it is desert, regardless. This area, okay, so they cleared huge areas for wheat production and livestock. This area became known as the wheat belt, and it still is, and it's around 6% of Western Australia. Today, around 90% of the native vegetation is gone. Jesus. Well, that sounds about right for people. Uh-huh. When the Great Depression hit in 1929, the government basically told the farmers to grow more wheat, and they promised to help them through subsidies, tax incentives, loans, la la la, other forms of support. However, they did not. So wheat prices started to fall, and by October 1932, the situation got so bad that the farmers threatened to refuse to deliver the wheat. Yeah, that sounds about right. So that's a little bit of background. Now for the fun part. Yeah, bring in the emu. Yeah, I'm bringing them in. I'm bringing them in. All right, some emu facts. First of all, they are the second longest.
unknownSorry. What?
SPEAKER_01We don't have to include this in the podcast, but I'm just really enjoying the transition from the Great Depression was really bad and the government lied. Let's talk about emus.
SPEAKER_00Wait, I can actually transition better.
SPEAKER_01Go on.
SPEAKER_00But you know who was thriving? Our friends, the emus. Nice. Okay. Lois. So emus are the second largest bird in the world, second only to ostrich. Nice. I don't know why this whole time I'm treating you like we're molested. But I am going to keep going with it because I feel like you're gonna get a lot of it. So we're just gonna keep going.
SPEAKER_01I I promise I'll it's only so I feel like I'm gonna get a treat after this.
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_00My fridge is pretty empty. All right. Um, so yes, they're only found in Australia. They can grow up to over six feet and they can travel great distances and can sprint at 30 miles per hour.
SPEAKER_01Jesus.
SPEAKER_00Uh, needless to say, they have no natural predators, and I just want to throw in this fun fact. The dads take care of the eggs. They incubate them and then raise them for months. Cute. It's nice. We love a stay-at-home diet. Have you ever eaten an emu egg or an ostrich eye?
SPEAKER_01Uh, I feel like I've had like an ostrich burger. Okay. Sorry. I meant I said egg, but no, I went straight for the mate. Okay. I don't know. I feel bad. I don't know why I feel bad. I shouldn't feel bad. But emus and ostriches, but that's okay.
SPEAKER_00They're birds. They're yeah, but they're beautiful. We're gonna start picking animals uh about who's beautiful.
SPEAKER_01I wanna eat the ugos. Alright. I'm looking at me, chicken. I'm just kidding, I love chicken. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Do you remember that time where we were on a road trip and we went to that Amish um supermarket, and I was like, I've never had pickled quail eggs. And we brought them as a present to my aunt, and then I put them on the table and proceeded to eat all of them.
SPEAKER_01You ate so many. I don't think I've ever like I it it made me feel sick. Do you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00I like them a lot, and I've tried to look for them, and I I've even considered pickling my own, but I don't think it's a good look. Okay, anyways, uh back to our main event. So emus are migrating birds who live in huge colonies, and emus happen to love open plains, and especially if it's supplied with tons of extra water for livestock. When they arrived there, 20,000 emus strong. They were like yes.
SPEAKER_01Wait, can you say that in an Australian accent?
SPEAKER_00No.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00So the farmers had put up wildlife fences uh to keep out rabbits and dingos, as well as the emus, though they weren't a problem uh quite yet. And they were effective for a while, but eventually they were full of holes. And you can't keep a six-foot bird away with a dingy little fence. And as a result, there was nothing to prevent emos from beaching the fences. I just want to go on tiny little rant about how historically horrible Australia is at wildlife management.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00So they kept like, it's not they're not the only country to do this, but they kept bringing over invasive species to control other invasive species.
SPEAKER_01And then like the bullfrogs?
SPEAKER_00Oh, how'd you know?
SPEAKER_01If you think Emily, we have a mutual friend, shout out to Emily, um, who's obsessed with frogs.
SPEAKER_00If you think she hasn't made me watch that documentary, I don't know what documentary you got the frog ROM, but I was impressed by the fact that you knew it was a frog.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was a bullfrog, and they brought it. It wasn't a bullfrog?
SPEAKER_00Close. It was a cane toad.
SPEAKER_01Cane toad, yes, sorry. Cane toad, and it they brought them in to like take care of some pests. Yes, and the the fucking cane toads ended up destroying so much, and they're still a problem today. Just because one guy was like, we should bring in some cane toads.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Um, well, they brought them in to control beetles um that were damaging so sugarcane crops, and of course they failed, and they are poisonous, so they poisoned a bunch of like big predators like crocodiles and stuff. Um, let's see, let's let's do a few more failures because it's really fun to point out uh colonist failures. Um, this isn't personal. If anyone from Australia is listening, I would go way harder on the US.
SPEAKER_01I actually uh would like to clarify it is quite personal. Please continue.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So the red fox, uh brought over by the British for fox hunting, a lot of places did that. I feel like the states did that too. Um, they became a number one problem, and they had uh impact on small marsupials and ground nesting birds. And then this is a very new discovery. I did not know this. So they um imported camels for transport because like a lot of desert. It's not it's not a bad idea, but they damaged like a shit ton of vegetation, and it's the largest uh population of camels in the world. Oh cool trivia. Are you not shocked?
SPEAKER_01I'm just more like I'm more just flabbergasted that they that there's multiple instances of this.
SPEAKER_00Like, dude, there's like I wrote down like 10 and then I was like, this could be a whole nother podcast, and it just anyways, it doesn't matter. They they are very bad at this. Like very bad at this. Alright, so we're getting to the Great Emu War of 1932. So the farmers reached out to the Australian government, and because they were our war veterans, naturally they requested gun machines and help from the army. God, but the government agrees. They send over like two soldiers and a commander. Their commander's name. Now I'm not gonna try to pronounce this correctly because a white man having like 20,000 names in one name is unreasonable, but I'm gonna do it anyways because I it's a fun time. Major Gwynid Perves Wine Abre Meredith. Uh, we're gonna call him Meredith.
SPEAKER_01It sounds funny just because it's fun. It sounds like you just said something backwards. Like it sounds like you encountered to me.
SPEAKER_00Can you recite the alphabet backwards? Okay, I'm gonna tell you. Let me let me just tell you how the first one's spelled. Okay. G-W-Y-N-Y-D-D. Is that not fucking unreasonable?
SPEAKER_01Respectfully, I decline.
SPEAKER_00Gwyn Gwynidas.
SPEAKER_01Wait, they brought in the army to fight the email.
SPEAKER_00Two soldiers and a commander. Let's not let's not get too crazy. All right, so they bring them in and they were equipped with two light machine guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition. Jesus, so they're just planning to mow them down? Yeah, of course. Their objective uh was, of course, the mass extermination of a native species. So the soldiers were told to collect a hundred emu skins so their feathers could be used to make hats for light horsemen. Okay, so they uh traveled to Campion where about 50 emus were sighted, but the birds were out of range, and the local settlers tried to herd the emus into an ambush, but the birds split into small groups and ran so that they were a difficult target.
SPEAKER_01They outsmarted you.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Okay. A few days later, Meredith set up an ambush where about a thousand emus were spotted. They waited until the birds were close enough to shoot, but the gun jammed. After only a few birds were killed, the rest scattered.
SPEAKER_01Jammed, or did an emu have a pick at it before.
SPEAKER_00We only know what they tell us. Jammed, but still that's such a you went all the way there, dude. Alright, so they moved further south where the birds were reported to be fairly tame. Uh there was very limited success. Army observers wrote, and I quote, each pack seems to have its own leader now. A big black plume bird which stands fully six feet high and keeps watch while his mates carry out the work of destruction and warns them of our approach.
SPEAKER_01Hell yeah. Sounds a lot more organized than whoever's like letting in, letting out animals in Australia. I have my full support.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I know Australians are known for how good they are at our just alienated or Okay. This doesn't even come close to the most ridiculous thing. Okay. Here we go. At one point, these fucking weirdos mounted a gun on a truck, but it was ineffective surprise. But why? I love the reasons why this doesn't work out. The truck couldn't catch up to the birds, and the ride was so rough they couldn't fire any shots. So what they didn't know how they did all this like recon in ambush. You don't know, you didn't counter like think about how fast does this truck go? How fast have we observed that emus go? This land is quite rough. They just went for it.
SPEAKER_01This is what you're saying, all of this, and I'm going to a place of Mad Max, and I'm just imagining like them on a truck trying to catch up to these emus and like a guy with a guitar just hanging off the back of the truck. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I bet it jammed too, but they couldn't. No. They stopped. They can't list up all of their failures. All right. By November 8th, six days in, 2,500 rounds of ammunition had been fired. The number of birds killed is uncertain, but estimates say it was 50. Meredith's official report noted that his men had suffered no casualties except for their dignity. I love that he had to point out that there were no casualties.
SPEAKER_01Except for their dignity. No kidding.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that is a good that's a casualty for sure. Alright, I'm gonna have you read this. Um, it's an ornithologist called Dominic Serventy summarizing this operation. Okay. I'm not gonna read it in Australian.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna and then I said no. No, no. The machine gunners' dreams of point blank fire into the masses of emus were soon dissipated. The emu command had e no 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 combat area after about a month. They did this for a month.
SPEAKER_00So far. So so far, emus are winning by a lot.
SPEAKER_01And it like I'm giving credit to like emu intelligence, but also sounds like all they did was just like split up and that just utterly confounded.
SPEAKER_00Split up and ran faster than their one vehicle that they brought down. Yes. No, no, you forgot someone's standing. They're treating them truly like like they are an organized army. I don't think this was not written sarcastically. No, I they're like there's a leader and they go and they fuck up our crops while the leader is standing there.
SPEAKER_01We need eyes on Australia right now. Like, what are they doing now?
SPEAKER_00Following the negative coverage of the events in the media, obviously, which included claims that only a few emus had died, they withdrew the military personnel and the guns. After the withdrawal, Major Meredith compared the emus to Zulus, which are native South Africans. Oh god. And commented on the agility of the Emus, even while badly wounded. I'm gonna make you read one more thing, but I promise after this you don't have to read anything.
SPEAKER_01If we had a military division with Oh, wait, this is uh Meredith. This is Meredith. Yes. If we had a military division with the bullet carrying capacity of these birds, it would face any army in the world.
SPEAKER_00So Meredith is such a dramatic girly.
SPEAKER_01Satire. They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. They are like Zulus whom even dumb dumb bullets could not stop. I mean, so hugely inappropriate, but also like what a great day for pro-kills.
SPEAKER_00I think it's all a compliment for the Zulus and the emus.
SPEAKER_01I don't love that he compared um emus to black people, but I also understand that he sounds like he's been pretty warped by defeating.
SPEAKER_00So not well. No. All right, second attempt. So it's November 12th, 1932. Uh, this is only a couple weeks after the first attempt. The emu attacks on crops continued. Farmers asked for support again. The Minister of Defense approved another attack. Meredith comes back because apparently there was a lack of experienced machine gunners. Again, what did they do in World War II? Did they just go out there with little spears? What were you doing? They don't know how to use machine guns? I don't know. So Meredith is like their only hope. They were a little more successful for the first two days, but the third not so much. Unfortunately, by December 2nd, the soldiers were killing approximately 100 emus per week.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_00In Meredith's final report, he claimed 986 confirmed kills and 2,500 wounded birds. Fuck this guy. Sure. But think about how little this is out of 20,000. And also, the numbers are highly disputed by historians. It's presumed much, much less.
SPEAKER_01For sure.
SPEAKER_00Meredith really needed this.
SPEAKER_01Meredith needed a win so bad. I know. His kids were not respecting him at home.
SPEAKER_00No one was. Okay, so that's it for that. Every few years, the farmers of the region requested military help, but they were turned down. So like every couple years, they were like, Can we get more? Can we get Meredith back? Meredith. And they were like, no, don't make us do it. Don't make us pay. Conservationists there protested the cull as extermination of the rare emu and an attempt at the mass destruction of the birds. They eventually got better at uh exclusion fences and were more successful at keeping them out. The Sunday Herald reported in 1953 the incongruity of the whole thing had the effect for once of arousing public sympathy for the emu. Yeah. So this is part of like how they won. The emus like all you did was not be successful, and now people love them even more when before they were like pests.
SPEAKER_01Their general knew what they were doing. The general emu was like, boys, it's a long game. It's a psychological war. What we do out here on this field. It matters to just one drop, just one drop in the bucket right now.
SPEAKER_00Do not stop.
SPEAKER_01We're gonna continue.
SPEAKER_00Um so they won the war, essentially. They won. They they were undefeated, basically. The casualties were not a lot, and emus are and have always been classified as least concerned bitches globally. Uh their population has not decreased in the slightest. Suck on that, Meredith. Thriving. Uh, that is my emu story.
SPEAKER_01I love it. It's so good. So much.
SPEAKER_00They just like it's like everything on the internet basically says they're they went to war and emus won.
SPEAKER_01I mean, yeah, the emus won. How could you not win? I mean, it's you're trying to battle a beautiful majestic animal. You're gonna look like the dick.
SPEAKER_00Also, they're really big.
SPEAKER_01They're really big and cool and scary.
SPEAKER_00Like, they are pretty scary. They are, but like this whole story is just I feel like Meredith jammed his own gun.
SPEAKER_01Meredith was on his own journey. Yeah. I I would argue I'd love to see like the POV, like a film just like from him and him possibly falling in love with an emu, yeah, and then the gun jammed conveniently.
SPEAKER_00Oh Meredith. Is this really a story about Meredith? I hate that, but I don't know.
SPEAKER_01I think it's always been a story about Meredith. Maybe Meredith is representational, maybe about the folly of man versus nature. Like you're gonna look like a fucking idiot if you try to curb an entire freakily smart animal species.
SPEAKER_00Or get rid of beetles and bring over other species.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, my my you know what standing back, Nicole? Yes, yes. Yeah. If we can take a step back, I think my main concern is why are you hanging your hat on this and not more concerned about the other animals that you if we're gonna start killing animals, which I don't like, but why not start on the animals that you brought in and that are. No, cane toads are you can't go to war with a fucking toad.
SPEAKER_00No, especially if they're poison. Can you imagine Meredith there? He would be lost in the jungle tearing out his hair.
SPEAKER_01No, he's still there. Some say if you if you're very quiet on the desert plains, you can hear Meredith screaming, ah, one second, it's my gun.
SPEAKER_00Don't fuck with emus. Moral of the story. Definitely don't fuck with ostriches. Don't fuck with you in that area.
SPEAKER_01No. Or we haven't even talked about cossaries. Uh-oh, you know something I don't look up a cossawary right now. Just explain what it is. It's basically like an emu, but it's like it doesn't look like it should exist. Look up a cossawary.
SPEAKER_00Right. So I spelled this so bad that my phone doesn't can't even like get close to something else. Yeah. Okay, how do you think you spell it? C-A-S-S-O-W-A-R-Y. You were close, but that's impressive. Thank you. Oh, I know these ones. Right? Little rainbow heads. Yes. Oh my god. They're cute, but I would I would take an emu. This is a dinosaur. Well, they're all dinosaurs, but this one is especially a dinosaur. We'll post this on our Instagram. We'll post all of it. We'll post it all. It's just an ornithology. Ornithology Instagram now.
SPEAKER_01We hard pivot into birds. If you want any updates about the podcast or want to see episode related content, please follow us on Instagram at SoBizarrePod. We would appreciate it. And follow us on whatever platform you use to stream the podcast. Thanks for listening.