#Emu War

[fuckingstupidbracket]

Funniest historical events bracket

Details under the cut:

Emu war: Australians decided there's too much emus and they need to decrease their numbers because they are destroying crops. Emus won. I mean they killed some emus, but not that many in the grand scheme of things and the emus continued doing what they wanted (eating crops).

Pig war: A conflict between the US and Great Britain caused by a pig. An American found a pig eating tubers on his land and he shot the pig. The Irishman who owned the pig was rightfully pissed. The American offered 10 dollars in compensation, and the Irish guy was like, no??? give me a 100 bucks. So the American was like, no fuck you, I'm not paying anything, your stupid pig was tresspassing onto my land, and the Irishman was like, no fuck YOU, your tubers were tresspassing onto my pig. So then British cops threatened to arrest the American guy, and then US military entered the picture, and it just escalated until the news reached DC and London (both were like wtf chill out its just a pig). No one died except for the pig.

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

pt II australia but i've never been there

I didn't even have to wait for y'all's responses on part I to make this because Australia is WILDING. As per usual, salutations to Arthur's grandmother's boyfriend Brian.

Everything remaining that I know about Australia:

There was an emu war. There were many emu casualties, and no human ones, but the emus won anyway. Sun Tzu is making way for the emus.

That was the only research I did on the emu wars, but as someone who met a few emus once, they were very lovely to me and very soft to pet. They also were very jabby. One of them looked deeply concerned as they looked at me, I believe they thought I was a deformed emu. I am on the winning side of the war.

During Christmas, Santa does not have a sleigh. He has a surfboard, and he does slay.

There are a lot of animals. Many have no placenta, as I recall from biology. Due to the nature of the continental drift and geographical isolation, Australian marsupials evolved separately from placental mammals, and were not wiped out by invading species. Due to convergent evolution, there are also analogous species between the placental mammals and the marsupials.

What just happened I'm sorry deep science trauma was unearthed. The point is, a lot of animals. A kangaroo is probably in your backyard. A koala just stole your girlfriend. An alligator murdered your classmate. It just happens.

KOOKOOBURRA SITTING ON THE OLD GUM TREE MERRY MERRY SOMETHING SOMETHING idk I was 3 when my mum sang me that.

The internet is awful. Rumours are that the local snake ate it.

Australia is very very pretty, I know this because of an Australian Tourism Department ad that I saw when I was 12 and had cable TV.

You must not forget your Hat. It's like the three little kittens song, but with the Hat instead of mittens.

The Wibbles are a thing. I thought they were a band. Spotify said no. I no longer know what they are.

Crocodile Dundee is a thing. I saw him in Snoopy/Peanuts.

Steve Irvin met his wife in an animal area and his daughter met her husband in an animal area. I don't know anything more these lovely folks, or what the animal area was, I'm afraid.

There is a cake with white stripes that is the Best for Birthdays.

The accent is beautiful, but I admit for years I couldn't differentiate it from British and American accents as a child because to me it sounded like the lovechild of them both and it made me very confused.

Uh, Australia exists.

Yeah, no, that's all I've got. Love to the Australian maggots.

[salmonella-destroyer-of-worlds]

[evangelifloss]

Please tell me about the great emu war of 1932 :3

"Haha Australia lost a war to emus twice"

NO BUT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!!

Here's why:

First, I don't believe foreigners know how BIG emus are, and how much of their stocky main body is just layers and layers of feathers

This is Peck. He doesn't actually Peck but he LOVES the LADIES and for reference, that's me as he's uh... trying to woo me. I'm 4'11 / 149cm tall and in that photo he's not standing at full height either because he's preparing to get lower and ahem, grind. He is also a juvenile.

Emus are typically 5.7 feet/1.75 meters tall, but they have been recorded to get up to 6.2 feet/1.9 meters.

So imagine you've got this big ass dinosaur bird with the most t-rex looking feet perfectly designed for running. Yeeting. Skeeting. Killing you maybe. And now take into account these flightless fucks can run up to 62 Kilometers per hour. THATS 39 MILES PER HOUR TOP SPEED.

Now add 20,000 emus.

So 20,000 emus against poverty-stricken farmers with failing crops, farmers WHO WERE MOSTLY WW1 VETERANS BY THE WAY. Yeah nah.

Here's a visual to help y'all understand how insanely large emu groups get.

Onto why the hell were there so many emus on the farmlands (even tho... yknow... the emus and the local indigenous were there first but we won't get into that.)

Basically a big drought made the horde of emus move away from their usual dwindling territory, onto the sprawling Australian "farm lands" and remember I mentioned their feet before? BIG STOMPY. Whatever crops that had somehow managed to survive the severely vitamin-deficient soil and grow, did not in fact, survive the dinosaur feet as the emus strolled through, pecking and foraging the ground along the way.

The plight of the veteran farmers didn't fall on deaf ears, but the Australian government severely underestimated the power of 20,000 emus by a LONG shot. Plus they weren't all that interested either, until at least it was reported that the emus were destroying the Rabbit Proof Fence. What legends.

For the first "war" the government sent 3 men.

Yep. You heard me. Three guys. Major Meredith, Sargeant McMurray and a soldier by the name of O'Halloran.

They had one truck with a machine gun, and probably other guns, but between them roughly 10,000 rounds of ammunition.

So off they went. To wage war against the progressive emus breaking the symbol of "White Australia" AKA the Fence. Oh and also I guess the starving vets.

This is it. This is what they had.

Locals from all around joined in the fight and tried to herd the roaming groups of emus into the murder range but the emus had a tactic. One that us Aussies use at bush doofs when you hear police sirens- and that is to SCATTER.

They only killed "a dozen birds" from a group estimated to be around 1000. It didn't help that the machine gun jammed during this organised ambush.

And by then, the Emus clicked onto what was happening. They split up into smaller groups, observed to be led by the largest sized male who kept an eye out for the enemy. Never again did they risk coming together as seen before.

The war was lost. Only a few more attempts were made that had little success and Ornithologist Dom Serventy concisely summarised the whole operation.

I want to remind you all that this is a recorded statement, kept on file in legal military documentation

"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 the combat area after about a month."

Let's move onto Emu War Part Two: Unsuccessful Boogaloo

Heads up by the way, TW below.

Emus were still, y'know, Emu-ing about and the drought didn't let up either. People were still dying of starvation, becoming homeless and committing suicide. It took the Premier of Western Australia, and a Base Commander in the military penning letters and using media pressure to finally convince the government to give it another go.

Major Meridith returns to the War and having learnt from practically everyone's past assumptions of the highly intelligent sonic-speed bird, brought success. And by that I mean, more success than the previous war.

Ultimately only 5% of the 20k Emu Army were ever killed, and even that is debated since it is more than likely they inflated numbers of kills to lessen the damage of being completely inferior to the superb qualities of the Emu.

A Federal parliamentarian (like a senator) when asked about whether there should be a medal made for the conflict, he replied with:

"Any medals should go to the emus who had won every round so far."

And of course in true Aussie fashion, the Defence Minister who supported and approved for the Emu War 1 and 2, was given the title by the Australian public, and international conservationists of ‘Minister for the Emu War’.

Ouch, but also, Not Every Problem Has To Be Solved With Guns.

Ironically what worked far better was the implementation of fences to keep the Emus OUT and unfortunately, a bounty system that saw many locals and professional hunters alike have FAR more success than an entire military operation. 57,000 bounties were claimed in a six month period after it being introduced in 1934.

Thus concludes the Great Emu War of 1932.

If you're asking why I know this, I studied it when I was 16, and made an entire poster to which I gave it to my Japanese Teacher. For context: I was living in Japan. Going to a Japanese School. And teaching my poor English teacher about this Emu War that he only believed once he looked it up. As a parting gift I gave him a poster. Shout out to Kawamura-Sensei you tried so hard not to laugh at the poster but I won that war.

Here it is. All the quotes on there are real too!

[geekysteven]

Me: its weird that the dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park movies can outmatch humans with guns

Australia: haha so weird and unrealistic lol

[victusinveritas]

The good kids get a visit from Santa.

The bad ones get a visit from emus.

@sharkchunks reply needs to be added:

“YOU GET LIBERTY MUTUAL FOR CHRISTMAS!!! DO NOT DEFY LIBERTY MUTUAL!!!”

“WE KNOW WHEN YOU ARE SLEEPING WITH LIBERTY MUTUAL’S MONITOR SYSTEM!”

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

Random movie ideas:

1) A comedy-historical movie about the Great Emu War, starring Chris Hemsworth, Jai Courtney, and Ben Mendelsohn as the soldiers ordered to kill the emus.

2) A legal drama based on the real-life lawsuit between Todd McFarlane and Neil Gaiman over the character rights of Spawn (think “The Social Network”). For casting, I was thinking John Krasinski as McFarlane and Andrew Garfield as Gaiman.

3) A horror movie about a submarine crew that goes down to Challenger Deep to study the area and end up discovering the remnants of an underwater city. The researchers managed to gain entry into the city, not knowing they’re walking into a nightmarish situation. For a potential cast, I was thinking Idris Elba, Kate Siegel, and Steven Yeun as the 3 leads.

4) A coming-of-age movie about a teenager (played by Amybeth McNulty) who runs away from home and makes her way to California since her favorite band is looking for a drummer. She fails the audition, but is taken in by the band’s manager (played by Keanu Reeves) when she says that she doesn’t want to go back to her family.

5) A comedy-historical movie about the Lobster War, with the main focus being on the Brazilian and French governments debating whether lobsters are fish or not. Aubrey Plaza plays the protagonist who is a journalist who can’t believe this conflict is an actual thing. By the way, here’s a meme to summarize this potential movie:

[dougielombax]

The emu war began 92 years ago today.

What a shitshow

[goobbgoober]

Uprooted has quickly become a comfort show for me and I came up with a nightmare npc that is literally just me shoving so much knowledge of the emu war into my show.

Of course, his name will be Major Gwynyd Meredith (the man who lead the attacks) and he will be an Australian bush turkey (which comes from the Aboriginal story of how emus lost their ability to fly). He's a war veteran with awful stories about a long war with monstrously huge birds known as emus in a far off land and also there's terrible references to the musical that absolutely no one will get because no one has seen the musical lol.

My brain has created this awful creature that I will never be able to let go off and I need to share him with the world. I apologize for my love for weird things lol

[pad-wubbo]

"Victor of the Emu War"

Infinite Painter.

On Sunday, I watched a musical about the Emu War, in which Australia brought in its actual ministry of defence to combat emus, who were just too tough. They fought a war against birds in 1932 and lost. To commemorate this, I have sketched over a public domain photo of an emu, added a helmet, backpack and Lewis gun, and painted under it. Triumphant.

CC-BY-SA 4.0

[siltandsand]

Where the Stars Fell Ep 24

Florence, unknowable clerk of the DMV (Damnations and Miracles Verification): Aside from also the RMS Titanic, there was the Emu War of 1932-

BB: Hey, she [Gabriel] was there too.

Florence: On the side of the military, Beelzebub. You were one of the emus.

[jurakan]

For some reason I cannot find a way to search through your posts, so I have no way of fact-checking this, but I would think that by now you've done at least one fun fact on the Emu War in Australia, correct? And even if you have, I'd love to read up on one of my favorite historical events of all time :D

So I don't have a search feature, as I mostly rely on tags (posts about the Emu War are in the Australia tag), and I haven't talked about the Emu War for a Fun Fact it seems! So! Today You Learned about the Emu War!

In the years after World War I, veterans in Australia were given large pieces of land so that they could become farmers. Australian government figured it had to do something with all of that land, after all. Then the Great Depression happened, and things were rough, were the government promising assistance that never came.

And then, in September of 1932, there was a historic drought in Australia. And emus? They migrate. That's a thing they do. And fleeing drought conditions, they found huge chunks of land with a butt-ton of wheat, and water for irrigation. Free food? Free drink? Well of course the emus thought it would be a great thing to just hang out in those places. All, y'know, 20,000 of them.

Twenty thousand emus what the fudge

Some of these veterans went to Minister of Defence (because Australians, like Brits, can't spell 'Defense') George Pearce, who agreed that they should deploy machine guns on these overgrown pigeons. This was a silly move, but some suspect that it was meant to cool tensions between government and soldiers, and make it look like the government cared about what happened to its veterans. Or maybe Pearce genuinely thought shooting up emus was a good idea, I don't know.

In any case, the Emu War began in October of 1932. Or rather, that's when it was sort of declared. The first "battle" was to be at the beginning of November, but it was delayed a day due to rain.

Ridiculousness ensued.

See, the first "battle" involved trying to lure the birds into an ambush, which didn't quite work because their flocks split up. The first round of fire wasn't effective, but eventually they did kill some emus. Two days later, on November 4, a flock of some one thousand emus was spotted, cornered, and fired upon--the soldiers managed to kill 12.

TWELVE.

OUT OF A THOUSAND.

Hoo boy.

The "campaign" continued for a while but ultimately led to not that many emus being killed. The press was having a field day with this, and military leaders noted that emus are surprisingly maneuverable, even when wounded. One officer even compared the emus to Zulu warriors.

On November 8, the Australian forces withdrew. However, the emu problem remained, so on November 12, Pearce approved more attacks. And in this round, it was actually effective; the soldiers managed to actually kill quite a few hundred emus, and the government considered this a success, though as you can imagine there are tons of people who have a problem with the government lending machine guns to kill wildlife, especially once news of this hit the UK, but... yeah. Despite what people say, the second phase of the Emu War was actually sort of successful?

But did anyone really win?

Anyway, they started putting up fences to keep the emus out, and in the 50's the Australian government approved more ammunition in case the farmers needed it.

Also, there's apparently an action comedy movie adaptation in the works written by John Cleese.

[gray-crackleway]

As a new zealander you are my mortal enemy /j

as an australian, my mortal enemies are the emus.

[wikiweird]

The Great Emu War -

In the early 1900s, there was a peculiar phenomenon known as "The Great Emu War" that took place in Western Australia. It was an unusual conflict between Australian farmers and a large population of emus, flightless birds native to the country.

In 1932, following World War I, many ex-soldiers in Australia were struggling to make a living. The Australian government decided to offer them land for farming in Western Australia as part of a settlement scheme. However, the farmers soon encountered a problem: an overabundance of emus that were wreaking havoc on their crops.

The emus, in search of food and water, were damaging fences, destroying crops, and causing significant economic losses for the struggling farmers. In response, the government decided to deploy military personnel armed with machine guns to combat the emu population.

The "Great Emu War" commenced on November 2, 1932, with soldiers attempting to cull the emus. However, the emus proved to be formidable opponents. They were fast, agile, and evasive, making it difficult for the soldiers to effectively eliminate them. Despite several attempts, the emus managed to evade the gunfire and continued to cause damage to the farmers' crops.

After multiple unsuccessful military operations, the government eventually abandoned the direct use of armed forces in favor of offering a bounty system to incentivize farmers to cull the emus themselves. This approach proved to be more effective in controlling the emu population.

While the "Great Emu War" was not a conventional war by any means, it stands as a strange and somewhat comical historical event, showcasing the unique challenges faced by Australian farmers and the unexpected resilience of the emus in the face of armed opposition.

Read more

[victusinveritas]