Australia’s emu war: John Cleese outrun in race to shoot movie of how flightless birds thwarted army’s machine guns
A troupe of Australian comedians appears to have gazumped John Cleese to bring the bizarre story of the great emu war to the big screen.
In 1932, soldiers armed with machine guns were deployed in Western Australia to battle huge flocks of the giant native birds. Their annual migration from the arid interior to the coast had increasingly met the rapidly expanding wheat belt, to the delight of the emus and the horror of the farmers.
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Drastic measures were deployed. In early November 1932, the Seventh Heavy Battery of the Royal Australian Artillery, under the command of Maj GPW Meredith, arrived in Campion, about 320km (200 miles) from Perth to face an invasion of as many as 20,000 emus.
They carried Lewis light machine guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition.
Clearly it would be no contest, and so it proved: the emus prevailed with only light casualties.
Emus, which feature on Australia’s coat of arms, can grow up to 1.9m tall. The long-necked, shaggy-coated, flightless birds can run at up to 50km/h. They communicate by drumming, grunting and booming through an inflatable neck sac – a sound that can be heard up to 2km away.
Looking back in July 1953, two decades after the war, Sydney’s Sunday Herald wrote: “The enemy is the tough, prolific, gangling marauder of the sand plains whose species, ever since the beginning of agriculture in the state, has invaded, in a frenzy of hunger, some of the finest fields at the time of ripening of the harvest to shear off crops with voracious beaks and to trample with great webbed feet 100 plants into the earth for each one eaten.”
Cleese has written his own version of the saga, called The Great Emu War, declaring it a “very funny idea”. Production was slated for last year, with Moby reportedly set to compose the soundtrack.
A spokesperson for Cleese said it was hoped shooting would begin within months.
“John [Cleese], Rob Schneider, Monty Franklin, Camilla Cleese and Jim Jeffries [now known as Jim Jefferies] wrote the final script for the film at the beginning of 2021,” the spokesperson said.
“Since then Robyn Kershaw, the producer [of Bran Nue Day and Kath and Kim fame], has been in Western Australia trying to set the film up. The last thing I heard was that she was hoping to shoot this December, or January.”
But a local take produced by Umbrella Entertainment and Hot Dad Productions is due to have its premiere at Monster Fest in Melbourne on 22 October, featuring “a rag tag platoon of soldiers … driven into a brutal and bloody battle against Australia’s deadliest flightless beasts”.
The film features Luke McGregor, Jonathan Schuster, Damian Callinan and Lisa Fineberg, who also directed and produced alongside Jay Morrissey and John Campbell.
Fineberg credits Schuster with the “so ridiculous, so funny” idea, years before Cleese started talking about it. She said she was never taught about the great emu war at school.
“I didn’t really believe it was a thing,” she said. “It’s amazing. Once you find out that it happened, there is this whole world of people on the internet who are in love with the story.”
‘Invulnerability of tanks’
Ordinary guns were useless against the emus’ tough hides and unpredictable movements of the emus, who not only destroyed crops but trashed the fences that kept rabbits out.
But Meredith’s men were confident they could do better. The feathers of the slaughtered birds were to be made into hats for the Light Horsemen.
In the first few days of the conflict the military prepared an ambush at a dam, but fewer than a dozen birds were killed and about a thousand fled, amid reports of a jammed machine-gun.
The soldiers began to credit the enemy with unlikely military resources. They reported that the emus appeared to have picked pack leaders to stand watch, aiding in their escape, as they developed “guerilla tactics”.
The birds had the “invulnerability of tanks”, Meredith conceded.
“It is more than astonishing. It is miraculous. If I had a division of men who could carry bullets like that I would take on any army in the world,” Meredith said.
The Sunday Herald reported a member of the party saying: “There’s only one way to kill an emu – shoot him through the back of the head when his mouth is closed, or through the front of his mouth when his mouth is open. That’s how hard it is.”
The defence minister, George Pearce, temporarily withdrew the troops after hearing that only a few birds had been shot.
But a “storm of protest” ensued, he told parliament. He later found out that although hundreds of birds had been shot, “since the cessation of the shooting the birds had returned in thousands”. The war resumed.
Pearce was forced to defend himself against questions about whether it was “possible to kill the emus by more humane, if less spectacular, methods” than machine guns, according to Hansard.
The troops were withdrawn after about a month, but appeals for further action continued over the following years.
By 1953 the WA government had resorted to forking out £52,000 for a 215km (135 mile) emu-proof fence as part of the war “being continually waged against a creature regarded at home and abroad as a national symbol of Australia”, the Sunday Herald reported.
The emu fence, adapted from an existing fence originally constructed to try to keep rabbits out of agricultural areas, is now known as the state barrier fence and runs for more than 1,200km. It still pays a critical role in stopping the birds.
The Australian film has been years in the making, thanks at least in part to the pandemic.
Fineberg says, unlike Pearce, the film-makers won’t have to defend themselves to the animal rights groups.
“I think that it is very safe to say that no animals were harmed in the making of this film,” she said.
“Were some puppets harmed? Potentially.
“Let’s face it, the emus come out pretty good in the end.
“The fact is, the humans didn’t do too well in the war.”
Once you find out that it happened, there is this whole world of people on the internet who are in love with the story
Lisa Fineberg