Episode Details
Back to EpisodesAustralian Folly: The Great Emu War of 1932
Description
In 1932, Western Australian wheat farmers — many of them WWI veterans — were losing their livelihoods to an invasion of 20,000 emus. Their government's answer: send in the army, with machine guns.
What followed is one of the strangest true stories in military history. The soldiers had orders, tactics, and firepower. The emus had numbers, speed, and — according to the men sent to stop them — something that looked uncomfortably like teamwork. Six weeks later, the campaign quietly ended, the birds were still eating the wheat, and Australia had accidentally created one of its most enduring national jokes.
This episode traces the real 1932 "Emu War" from the failed opening ambush at Campion to the parliamentary debate that followed it — and asks what it means for a country to survive by learning to laugh at its own government's failures.
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