The Emu War

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a bugle, and then a great many birds)
Western Australia. Nineteen thirty-two. The military. Versus birds.

[Verse 1]
Twenty thousand emus came down for the water and the wheat
and the farmers, who were veterans, asked the Minister for Defence
for machine guns — and remarkably, astonishingly, he said yes,
and sent Major Meredith and two Lewis guns and ten thousand rounds
to conduct a military operation against a flightless bird
on the recommendation of a government that thought it would be quick.

[Chorus]
THE EMU WAR! It has a name! It is in the record!
Day one: the birds saw them coming and went round the hill!
Day two: the gun jammed after twelve! Day three: they SPLIT UP —
into small units, with what the Major described as leadership!
The Emu War! The birds won! They actually won!
Withdrawn after six days having killed almost nothing!

[Verse 2]
He said it in his report — I am not embroidering this —
that if he had a division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds
it would face any army in the world, and they were invulnerable
to machine guns because they were fast and they scattered,
and he compared them, in an official military document,
to Zulus, and said they had command structures. In writing. To the government.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
They tried again a month later and did somewhat better,
and the farmers asked again in 'thirty-four and were refused,
and eventually the answer was fencing and a bounty system
which worked, because it was sensible, and nobody sings about fencing.
The Emu War is remembered because it was ridiculous,
and it was ridiculous because somebody genuinely thought it would work.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(the bugle, defeated)
The birds are still there.
The birds have always still been there.