The Great Emu War: When Australia Lost to Giant Birds

By Barbara,2.1 min read,

Last Updated: June 26, 2025Published On: June 22, 2025

The Great Emu War – Soldiers Protecting Farm Land With Machine Guns

The Great Emu War - Soldiers Protecting Farm Land With Machine Guns

Yes, this really happened. And yes, the emus won.

In the annals of history’s most delightfully absurd conflicts, few tales flap quite as hard as the Great Emu War of 1932. Australia—armed with machine guns, soldiers, and strategy—declared war on… large, flightless birds. The result? A full-blown military defeat. For the humans.

Let’s unpack how one of the world’s most organized nations got outmaneuvered by a bunch of overgrown birds with no flight plan and no mercy.

The enemy: Emus

Post–World War I, Western Australia was full of disgruntled veterans turned farmers trying to make wheat grow in dusty soil. Then came the emus. Around 20,000 of them, migrating en masse from the inland after breeding season.

To the emus, the farms were an all-you-can-eat buffet. To the farmers, it was a catastrophe. Crops were trampled. Fences were broken. Desperation set in.

They asked the government for help. The government sent the military.

Enter the Emu War

Major G.P.W. Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery was deployed with two Lewis machine guns and 10,000 rounds of ammo. The plan: mow down the emus in tactical waves. Easy, right?

Wrong.

Turns out, emus don’t stand still. They run—fast. Up to 50 km/h (about 31 mph), in chaotic zigzags. And they’re surprisingly good at avoiding gunfire. The soldiers quickly learned that trying to shoot a bird sprinting across the outback was more Looney Tunes than tactical operation.

One field report noted: “If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds, it would face any army in the world.”

The birds strike back (by doing nothing at all)

After weeks of effort, the military claimed around 986 confirmed emu kills. Out of 20,000. And that number came at the cost of thousands of bullets, broken morale, and widespread mockery.

By December 1932, the government pulled the plug. The Great Emu War was over. Australia had lost. The emus didn’t even know they were in a war.

So… who actually won?

The emus. By miles. The incident became a national joke, but also sparked real conversations about wildlife management, farming policies, and the risks of solving agricultural problems with machine guns.

Today, the Emu War lives on as a shining example of overreaction, miscalculation, and underestimating nature’s most chaotic neutrals.