In December 1932 the word of the Emu War had spread, reaching the UK, some conservationist there protested the cull as "extermination of the rare emu" The war entered round 2 on Nov 13th and they found some success over the first two days with estimated 40 emus killed.īy Dec 2nd the soldiers were killing about 100 emus per week. Again Meredith was placed in the field due to the apparent lack of experienced gunners in the state Although the military agreed to lend the guns, the government expected them to provide their own personnel. Using the report for support, on Nov 12th Pearce approved resumption of military efforts and defended the decision in the Senate, by stating that the soldiers were necessary to combat such a serious agriculture threat. Meanwhile the official report of the first round from the Base Commander was issued, stating that 300 emus had been killed The Premier of Western Australia, James Mitchell gave his strong support to bring the military back in. The razing of the farms by the emus continued and again farmers pleaded for support Following the negative coverage of the events in the local media (that included claims that "only a few" emus had died) Pearce was forced to withdraw the military personnel and guns that day Nov 8th, the Australian House of Representatives discussed the operation. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month." 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.
"The machine-gunners' dreams of point blank fire into serried masses of Emus were soon dissipated. Summarizing the culls, ornithologist Dominic Serventy commented: But Meredith's report did say that his men had suffered no casualties At one point, Meredith even mounted one of the guns to a truck, which really didn't help as the truck couldn't keep up with the birds and ride was too rough to really get any shots offīy Nov 8th, 6 days after the first engagement, 2,500 rounds had been fired but the number of birds defeated was uncertain, one account said 50, but others range from 200-500 (as per the settlers).
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