The Emu War and the Problem Soldiers Could Not Shoot

In November 1932, soldiers equipped with Lewis machine guns were sent to Western Australia to deal with thousands of emus that were trampling the wheat of settlers, many of them veterans of the First World War. The officer in charge, Major G. P. W. Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery, reported that the birds broke into small groups when fired upon and proved far harder targets than anticipated.

The operation was withdrawn, briefly resumed and ended within weeks, and the tallies of birds killed remain disputed. Yet it would be wrong to treat the episode only as farce. The farmers' losses were real, and the continued reliance on bounties, which paid settlers directly for each bird, suggests that the military had misjudged not only the emus but the nature of the problem.