Australia’s emu war: John Cleese outrun in race to shoot movie of how flightless birds thwarted army’s machine guns

A victim of the 1932 emu war. Soldiers were deployed to mow down flocks of the flightless birds with machine guns, but proved no match for one of Australia’s national symbols. Composite: The Land Newspaper/Getty

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.