Area 17 · Act 3 · Crossing the Nullarbor
The Bass Strait Incident
Port Welshpool jetty on the Victorian coast, the commandeered ferry SS Coolabah mid-crossing, and the apple orchards and hop fields of Tasmania's Tamar Valley around Launceston.
DAY 205: THE EMUS HAVE A NAVY NOW
The history behind it
Emus cannot fly, and everyone in the Admiralty knows it, which is why nobody guards the Devonport ferry. The mob boards the SS Coolabah at Port Welshpool (the crew abandon ship in the newsreel's finest single shot) and drifts to Tasmania, an island with no native emus and therefore no emu doctrine whatsoever. Hobart's papers refuse to print the story for three days on the grounds that it is obviously false.
Outposts (4)
Take all of them and the area is yours. Retreat halfway through and the ones you already hold stay held.
Port Welshpool Jetty Guard
Grain silo · Defence tier 3
The embarkation fight: a Lewis Gun Post at the jetty head with Barbed Wire narrowing the pier to a single killing lane. Capture it to board the ferry — the run's midpoint, and the swarm's only path forward.
SS Coolabah Wheelhouse
Headquarters · Defence tier 3
Shipboard capture zone on a rolling deck: a Rifleman Line of merchant sailors and one panicking Sandbag Officer (the purser, buffing with the dinner gong). Deck rails mean nowhere to flank — pure overwhelm. Comedy objective: an emu wears the captain's hat.
Devonport Shore Battery
Artillery battery · Defence tier 4
Tasmania's hasty welcome: Field Artillery on the esplanade with a Searchlight Tower for the night landing. Falling-shadow circles pepper the beach — land moving, keep moving.
Tamar Valley Orchard Garrison
Telegraph station · Defence tier 4
Apple-country militia — two Rifleman Lines among the orchard rows and an Armoured Car on the Launceston road that bogs beautifully in irrigation mud. Orchards are dense Food; strip them bare.