George Pearce

They asked the government for help.

The Minister for Defence at the time, Sir George Pearce, listened to the complaints from the Wheatbelt and decided to send a small military unit to deal with the situation.

The idea seemed logical enough.

Soldiers had weapons, training and discipline.

For farmers who were already nearing financial collapse, thousands of hungry emus were threatening their survival.

Farmers demanded that the government act, and eventually, their request reached Sir George Pearce, who was the Minister of Defense.

A delegation of former soldiers met with Sir George.

They demanded that the army be deployed to kill the birds with machine guns.

Uh, we know what a Lewis machine gun can do, um, you know, at this point.

These, these, these are former soldiers, and these, the, uh, these farmers that were former soldiers, they go to the government and they say, "Give us machine guns." And Defense Minister Sir George Pearce does not wanna hand military machine guns to civilians.

[laughs]

Why not? [laughs]

Yeah.

Those guys are big and mean.

So we're in November 8 now, and Defense Minister George Pearce pulls the plug.

Soldiers are ordered to leave, all three of them.

... government, the Australians lost a war against emus.

So the government at the time was the Commonwealth of Australia, and the pivotal figure in our tale is the Minister of Defence, Sir George Pearce.

And this happened in the Campion District, which is importantly the wheat belt of Western Australia.

And it started on the 2nd of November and ended on the 10th of December in 1932, where, uh, there was also a little break in the middle, um, just so they could regroup after the emus, um, proved over- an overwhelming force.

Often the farmers stood at the edge of their fields, watching as their hopes for survival were destroyed by the marauding emus.

By 1932, Australian Defence Minister George Pearce was confronted by a group of ex-soldiers from Western Australia pleading for military support.

Letters were drafted, petitions were signed, advising the minister of the uncontrollable breeding and destruction of the crops caused by the invading emus.

So the Australian government agreed to act and took a heavy-handed approach to dealing with the problem and called in the Australian military.

Major Meredith, defending the operation against the mounting criticism, famously observed, 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.

An embarrassed Minister of Defence, Sir George Pearce, finally withdrew the troops from the front line on the 8th of November and the guns fell silent.

A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat zone.