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. 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 …

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