The Great Emu War of 1932

A playful yet deeply researched 14-slide narrative deck chronicling the absurd true story of the 1932 Australian military campaign against emus — and how the birds won.

How the Royal Australian Artillery lost a military campaign… to 20,000 flightless birds.

The Battle Plan

The Powder Keg: Australia in 1932

Know Thy Enemy: The Mighty Emu

Operation — Machine Guns at Dawn

The Campaign: Two Rounds, Zero Wins

The Aftermath: Who Really Won?

02

AUSTRALIA, 1932

Soldiers turned farmers, fields turned to dust

The Soldier Settlement Scheme gave returning WWI veterans land in the Western Australian Wheatbelt

Over 5,000 ex-soldiers were settled on marginal, semi-arid farmland by the late 1920s

The Great Depression collapsed wheat prices — farmers were already hanging by a thread

A severe drought in 1932 dried up inland water sources, pushing wildlife toward cultivated land

Desperate farmers petitioned the government for help — and they didn't mean pest control

Sources: 1, 2

The emu: 1.9 meters of pure chaos

Second-largest bird on Earth — only the ostrich stands taller, at up to 1.9 m (6 ft 3 in)

Top speed: 50 km/h (31 mph), sustained over long distances across open terrain

Legs among the strongest in the animal kingdom — can tear through metal fencing like paper

Nomadic omnivores: eat crops, seeds, insects, small animals — nothing on a farm is safe

Few natural predators remain in Australia; the emu answers to no one

Sources: 3, 4

20,000 emus. One wheat crop. Total devastation.

Drought had dried the emus' natural inland food and water sources. So they migrated — tens of thousands of them — into the Campion and Walgoolan districts. They didn't just nibble: they trampled crops, tore through rabbit-proof fencing, and devoured the farmers' last hope for a harvest. The damage was existential.

Sources: 1, 3

06

THE WAR BEGINS

Major Meredith and his Lewis guns enter the fray

Commanding officer: Major G.P.W. Meredith, Seventh Heavy Battery, Royal Australian Artillery

Forces deployed: 2 soldiers, 2 Lewis guns, 1 truck, 10,000 rounds of .303 ammunition

Lewis gun: WWI-era light machine gun, 500–600 rounds per minute, effective range ~800 meters

Mission: cull the emu population to protect farmers' wheat crops — simple in theory

Media immediately dubs them 'Meredith and his merry men' — the mockery starts before the shooting

Sources: 1, 4

November 2, 1932: The first shots ring out

First engagement near Campion: a flock of roughly 50 emus spotted in open terrain

Lewis guns open fire — the birds immediately scatter in all directions, zigzagging unpredictably

Emus disperse into small, mobile groups, making sustained fire nearly useless

Result: approximately 12 birds killed. The 'war' is off to a deeply embarrassing start

Major Meredith files his first report — the tone is already shifting from confidence to… concern

Sources: 1, 4, 7

986

The numbers don't lie — this was a disaster

~300

20,000

Rounds of ammunition fired

Emus killed (estimated)

Total emu population in region

Successful military outcomes

Sources: 1, 7

Let's put this in cold, hard numbers — because the statistics are genuinely staggering, and not in a good way. Over the course of two campaigns, the Royal Australian Artillery expended nine hundred and eighty-six rounds of .303 ammunition. Their estimated confirmed emu kills? Roughly three hundred — and that's the generous estimate. Do the math: that's more than three bullets per bird, assuming every bullet that hit an emu actually killed it, which many didn't. Meanwhile, the total emu population in the region hovered around twenty thousand. The army had eliminated maybe one and a half percent of the enemy force. And the number of successful military outcomes — defined as actually solving the problem the operation was launched to solve — was exactly zero. The emus remained. The crops remained threatened. The only thing that had been decisively defeated was the army's dignity.

“

If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds, it would face any army in the world.

Major G.P.W. Meredith, Royal Australian Artillery, 1932

Sources: 1, 4, 7

The emus adapt faster than the army

By the second campaign (mid-November), emus had figured out the Lewis gun's effective range

Birds learned to stay just beyond ~800 meters — close enough to mock, far enough to survive

Emus deployed what we'd now call guerrilla warfare: small mobile units, terrain exploitation

Meredith's only reliable tactic: lying in ambush near water sources, waiting for thirsty birds

Even then, emus were wary — 'they had posted sentries,' Meredith noted with exasperation

Sources: 4, 7

Here's the part that truly elevates this story from farce to legend. The emus learned. By the time Meredith's unit redeployed for their second campaign in mid-November, the birds had cracked the code. They had figured out exactly how far the Lewis guns could shoot — about eight hundred meters — and they simply stayed beyond that range. Close enough to be seen, close enough to be frustrating, but just far enough to be completely safe. They deployed what modern military strategists would call guerrilla tactics: splitting into small, highly mobile units, using folds in the terrain for cover, and — as Meredith himself noted with barely concealed frustration — posting sentries. Sentries! The only strategy that produced any results at all was lying in wait near waterholes, which felt less like warfare and more like a very inefficient hunting trip.

12

THE VERDICT

The emus won. The world laughed. We're still telling the story.

The military withdrew in December 1932 — the government declined to authorize a third campaign

Emu population persisted; crop damage continued; the bounty system returned and proved more effective

Global media had a field day — newspapers from London to New York covered the 'war' with glee

In 2022, the 90th anniversary brought a fresh wave of memes, documentaries, and National Geographic coverage

The lesson: nature doesn't read the script, hubris wears feathers, and sometimes the bird gets the last laugh

Sources: 1, 2, 5, 6

And so here we are. The army packed up and went home in December 1932. The government, perhaps wisely, declined to authorize a third campaign — presumably because someone ran the cost-benefit analysis on machine-gun ammunition versus dead birds and nearly fainted. The emu population endured. The crop damage continued. Eventually, the government dusted off the old bounty system — paying farmers per emu killed — which, in a shocking twist, proved far more effective than military intervention. The Great Emu War became a global punchline: newspapers from London to New York covered it with undisguised delight, and the story has never really gone away. In 2022, the ninetieth anniversary brought documentaries, National Geographic features, and an avalanche of internet memes. Nearly a century later, this gloriously absurd chapter reminds us of something genuine: nature doesn't follow human scripts, hubris is remarkably easy to mock when it's wearing feathers, and sometimes — just sometimes — the bird gets the last laugh. Thank you for joining me on this journey. May you never underestimate an emu.

References

[1] Emu War - Wikipedia — en.wikipedia.org [2] Emu War | Australia, Casualties, History, Summary, & Facts | Britannica — britannica.com [3] Emu - Wikipedia — en.wikipedia.org [4] The Great Emu War: How Flightless Birds Beat the Australian Army — historyhit.com [5] When Birds Beat Bullets: The Bizarre Tale of Australia’s Great Emu War – I.I.M.U.N. Blog — iimun.in [6] Instagram — instagram.com [7] The Great Emu War of 1932 | MeatEater Conservation News — themeateater.com

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