Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey brain Stuff. I'm Lauren Bogelbaum and this is a
Speaker 2: classic from the vault. In this one, we did into
Speaker 2: the weird moment in history when Australia went to war
Speaker 2: with a local population of EMUs and absolutely lost.
Speaker 3: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren bogolbam here with the story of
Speaker 3: the Emu War. It begins after World War One when
Speaker 3: soldiers returned home to Australia. The government was eager to
Speaker 3: show its support for veterans.
Speaker 1: Take land.
Speaker 3: The government said, grow wheat and we'll pay handsomely for it.
Speaker 3: It was a mission for the bright eyed and hopeful,
Speaker 3: for men eager to cultivate their futures. As they cultivated
Speaker 3: the soil in Western Australia. You could say the plan
Speaker 3: was flawed from the start. The government had ninety thousand
Speaker 3: hectors that's two hundred and twenty two thousand acres to
Speaker 3: go around, but that wasn't enough for the nearly five
Speaker 3: thousand veterans who wanted it. Land was doled out as
Speaker 3: it became available, and the choicest lots were given away first.
Speaker 3: The remaining veterans got land in Perth, which was not
Speaker 3: ideal for farming. What's more, in the years that followed
Speaker 3: the initial land handout, in the early nineteen twenties, Western
Speaker 3: Australia combated drought, frost, and a significant rabbit infestation. While
Speaker 3: veterans labored against the elements and the wildlife, Mounting financial
Speaker 3: challenges from the Great Depression threatened to undercut all they'd
Speaker 3: been promised. The Australian government had initially pledged to pay
Speaker 3: the veterans four shillings per bushel of wheat, but the
Speaker 3: bill tied to that sum was killed in the Senate.
Speaker 3: Another bill proposing three shillings per bushel actually passed, but
Speaker 3: the veterans.
Speaker 1: Were never paid.
Speaker 3: At last, in nineteen thirty one, the Wheat Bounty Act
Speaker 3: made good on the government's promise to pay for wheat
Speaker 3: at the staggeringly low price of four and a half
Speaker 3: pence per bushel. Let's put this in perspective. Pence is
Speaker 3: equivalent to pennies. A shilling is twelve pence, and there
Speaker 3: are twenty shillings in a pound in today's market, one
Speaker 3: British pound is worth about a buck fifth, So these
Speaker 3: veterans were being promised smallish sums of money to start
Speaker 3: and delivered way less, originally promised a fifth of a
Speaker 3: pound per bushel and settling for just one twentieth of
Speaker 3: a pound per bushel, ten times less than what was promised. However,
Speaker 3: by this point the veterans were desperate to make money
Speaker 3: off of their wheat crops, and the stage was set
Speaker 3: for a modestly fruitful harvest. No one could have anticipated
Speaker 3: what happened next. In the annals of history, there's perhaps
Speaker 3: no stranger of foe that the Australian emu, a flightless
Speaker 3: bird that can stand about six and a half feet
Speaker 3: that's two meters tall and weigh close to one hundred
Speaker 3: pounds that's forty five kilograms. And at an even stranger
Speaker 3: battle of man with machine gun versus giant bird, the
Speaker 3: giant bird won. But in warfare it's essential to know
Speaker 3: the enemy. So let's pause and examine the bird that
Speaker 3: dogged the veterans. We spoke with Eric Slovak, bird keeper
Speaker 3: at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park. He said EMUs are
Speaker 3: solitary for the most part. They do get together in
Speaker 3: breeding seasons, but EMUs would prefer to be by themselves.
Speaker 3: The exception is when they're foraging. Slovak likens that behavior
Speaker 3: to humans going out solo to a fast food lunch.
Speaker 3: He said, you're at McDonald's around lots of people, but
Speaker 3: you're not socializing.
Speaker 1: You're just there for the food. Okay.
Speaker 3: So they're big, solitary, hungry birds. Not much of a threat.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Multiply that emu you're envisioning by twenty thousand. That's how
Speaker 3: many descended upon Western Australia in nineteen thirty two. Until
Speaker 3: a decade earlier, in nineteen twenty two, EMUs had been
Speaker 3: a protected species. After that time, they were reclassified as vermin.
Speaker 3: Slovak explained, they'll eat anything they can get their mouths
Speaker 3: on without hunting. They're grazers. They like nuts and berries,
Speaker 3: baby grasses, which brings us back to wheat. Yep, they'll
Speaker 3: eat that, faced with a seemingly endless buffet of it.
Speaker 3: The opportunistic birds homed in on the veterans plots beaten
Speaker 3: down by weather at a volatile financial market. The veterans
Speaker 3: leaned hard on the government. Help us, they implored, so
Speaker 3: one made GPW. Meredith wound up leading a military offensive
Speaker 3: against the EMUs, but there were a few conditions. The
Speaker 3: veterans had to foot the bill for the ammunition. Lewis
Speaker 3: machine guns were used in EMU combat, and the veterans
Speaker 3: had to provide food and lodging for the men assigned
Speaker 3: to this curious mission. As a side note, a cinematographer
Speaker 3: from Fox movie Tone accompanied the military to film the
Speaker 3: EMU effort.
Speaker 1: Historians assume the footage would have been.
Speaker 3: Used in propaganda films to illustrate how the government was
Speaker 3: aiding its veterans. But spoiler alert, the mission didn't go
Speaker 3: exactly as planned. Armed with the knowledge that a slingshot
Speaker 3: can take down an ordinary bird, you might hazard a
Speaker 3: guess that a machine gun could wipe out EMUs easily,
Speaker 3: but you would be wrong. Emos are made to run,
Speaker 3: and when shot out, they're going to panic, and they
Speaker 3: won't move in any reliable direction. And emo's legs, head,
Speaker 3: and neck move with elegant fluidity while their bodies stay
Speaker 3: parallel to the ground. Slovak explained, the body looks like
Speaker 3: a wave. The legs good left, the head goes to
Speaker 3: the right, and they run in all different directions like
Speaker 3: dropped marbles.
Speaker 1: Meredith and his men couldn't get a.
Speaker 3: Straight shot at the EMUs who stayed out of range
Speaker 3: of the machine guns, even when enterprising veterans suggested putting
Speaker 3: them on vehicles and pursuing the birds as they ran.
Speaker 3: The military wasted a ton of ammunition. Only two hundred
Speaker 3: birds of the twenty thousand were actually killed, and not
Speaker 3: only did the EMUs evade the troops, they destroyed even
Speaker 3: more farmland in the process, tearing up the ground wherever
Speaker 3: they ran. The veterans were dispirited and their land was devastated.
Speaker 3: Meredith had a lot to answer for why had so
Speaker 3: much ammunition been wasted and was the effort even humane?
Speaker 3: Then there was the matter of money. The veterans promised
Speaker 3: to pay for the ammo, but the mission ultimately failed.
Speaker 3: Could the sun be forgiven? This example of ridiculous history
Speaker 3: can't be tied up conclusively with a tidy bow, and
Speaker 3: some details such as who was ultimately held responsible for
Speaker 3: the cost of the ammunition, are unclear. We do know
Speaker 3: that the veterans learned painfully from past performance that rifles,
Speaker 3: not machine guns, were the best way to handle nuisance EMUs.
Speaker 3: They continued their war in a one to one battle
Speaker 3: Veteran against Bird, and the Australian government later placed a
Speaker 3: bounty on EMUs to help control the population. But finally
Speaker 3: we do suspect that the Fox cinematographer gots epic b
Speaker 3: roll while on location. Today's episode is based on the
Speaker 3: article Ridiculous History the EMU War on HowStuffWorks dot Com,
Speaker 3: written by Candice Gibson. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 3: in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by
Speaker 3: Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit
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