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Area 26 · Act 5 · The March on Canberra

The March on Canberra

The Australian Capital Territory — a five-year-old planned city of ceremonial avenues radiating toward (provisional) Parliament House, sheep paddocks still inside the city limits, Lake Burley Griffin not yet flooded.

DAY 366: THE CAPITAL. PARLIAMENT SITS. THE EMUS DO NOT INTEND TO LET IT.

The history behind it

In 1932 Canberra was so new that sheep grazed beside Parliament, and the Minister for Defence who approved the Emu War — here, Sir Cedric Bloviate-Hume — must now defend a capital designed with wide open avenues and no walls whatsoever. Walter Burley Griffin designed a garden city; the emus agree it is delicious.

Outposts (5)

Take all of them and the area is yours. Retreat halfway through and the ones you already hold stay held.

  1. Duntroon Military College

    Supply depot · Defence tier 5

    Every unit in the army vocabulary, staffed by cadets executing the textbook perfectly and simultaneously — Rifleman Lines, Cavalry, Artillery, a Sandbag Officer who is the instructor grading them aloud. Capture silences the capital's reinforcements.

  2. Mount Ainslie Battery

    Artillery battery · Defence tier 5

    Field Artillery and Searchlight Towers on the summit commanding the entire Griffin land axis. Until it falls, shell shadows chase the swarm on every avenue below. The climb is barbed-wire switchbacks.

  3. Canberra Aerodrome

    Airfield · Defence tier 5

    The Biplanes live here. Waves of strafing runs defend their own field while Truck-Mounted Lewises circle the strip. Capture grounds ALL air support for the finale — pecked biplanes drop absurd Scrap.

  4. The Wall of Wheat

    Supply depot · Defence tier 4

    The army's final idea: a ceremonial bribe of stacked grain across Commonwealth Avenue, guarded half-heartedly because surely it will work. It is a trap (concealed Lewis Gun Posts in the stooks) and also, genuinely, an enormous amount of Food. Eat your way through the ambush.

  5. Provisional Parliament House

    Headquarters · Defence tier 5

    The finale. Major Meredith's last honorable rearguard on the front steps — his signature layered cones and feints, no tricks, hat squarely on. Behind him, Sir Cedric Bloviate-Hume promises total victory within the fortnight from the balcony. Highest Capture Threshold in the game: win it the newsreel way, by drowning the doorway in emus. Comedy objective: steal the Minister's hat mid-speech.