Just after the first world war, the Australian Government struggled to find things for their veterans to do upon returning home. From 1915, a 'soldier settlement scheme’ began to be rolled out across all states, and it eventually saw around 5,030 ex-soldiers given plots of land, which they were to convert into working farms, primarily to cultivate wheat and sheep. By 1920, the government had given the ex-soldiers about 90,000 hectares of land which was snatched from the emus. And on top of that, the veterans were put under even more pressure when the Great Depression hit in 1929, causing wheat prices to plummet. The government promised wheat subsidies, but those subsidies never came. The emus who had lost their homes started barging into wheat farms and eating the remaining wheat.
The ex-soldiers got irritated from this and thought of involving the army in this battle with emus in 1932. The war between these unarmed, flightless birds and the armed army went on till 1934. And guess who won the war? It was the emus who won it!!! The emus were soo good that the army men had quoted "If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds it would face any army in the world... They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. They are like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullets could not stop.”
so hilarious to imagine 😆