STOA Newsletter #2
Port Lincoln, Australian History
Welcome to the second official Shit Towns of Australia newsletter. We are so proud to be doing a number two in your inbox.
It's fair to say that we ruffled a few feathers on Facebook with our Australia Day write-up! The post attracted a massive swag of salty comments, some of which we’ve compiled at the end of this newsletter. We also managed to shake off a few of our stupider followers, as a bonus. It always perplexes us that people take anything posted by a page called ‘Shit Towns of Australia’ seriously, but there you go.
As well as Australia Day fan mail, we’ve got a brand new shit town review for you this week: Port Lincoln, SA. It's not too far from Port Pirie, so you know it’s shit. Also in this edition is an extract from our book listing the most significant events in Australian history, and this week’s Shit Town Power Rankings.
Enjoy! Or have a cry and send us sooky messages on Facebook — it’s up to you!
Rick & Geoff
Shit Town: Port Lincoln
Named by Matthew Flinders after his favourite nu-metal band Linkin Park, Port Lincoln only exists so people can confuse it with Port Augusta and Port Pirie. Port Lincoln is the one with less lead poisoning and more tuna - the Eyre Peninsula’s fishy foreskin. ‘Stinkin’ Lincoln’ is so tuna-focused that it holds an annual tuna festival featuring a tuna-throwing contest, offers bored tourists the chance to swim with caged tuna, and even elected a tuna mayor. It also hunts the shit out of critically endangered bluefin tuna and invented the ecologically disastrous tuna ranching practice, proving that it’s not so much the fish that the town celebrates, but the obscene amounts of cash it brings in.
Once poverty-stricken, Port Lincoln has been transformed by tuna money and now boasts the most millionaires per capita in Australia - i.e. cashed-up fisherbogans living a beer lifestyle on a champagne budget. A short wander from the water reveals that the salmon-pink mansions and fancy new shops are a mere facade and Port Lincoln is still quite the shithole - basically Whyalla in drag. The sea and scenery are ruined by tuna farms and the shit excuses for beaches are covered in rubbish from fishing fleets. The local reservoir is no longer drinkable due to pollution and salinity. There is nothing for residents to do short of crashing a hot-wired jet ski into a tuna trawler. This town proves that money can’t buy class - although it can buy ice. Clearly, Port Lincoln has taken to heart that old adage: let bogans be bogans.
Throwback: Significant Events in Australian History
65,000 BC - Aboriginal people discover Australia
3000 BC - The Egyptians discover Australia
1521 - The Portuguese discover Australia
1550 - Martians discover Australia (the first Australiens)
1606 - The Dutch discover Australia
1681 - The British discover Australia
1770 - The British discover the rest of Australia and declare the land to be completely uninhabited, despite the presence of about half a million pesky natives
1788 - The British begin shipping convicts to New South Wales, thus beginning the great Aussie tradition of establishing offshore detention centres in the Pacific
1824 - The colony’s name is officially changed from New Holland to ’Straya
1859 - Australian Rules football is invented as an elaborate practical joke
1869 - Australia remembers it has Indigenous people and starts nicking their children
1870 - Ned Kelly pioneers the hipster look
1901 - Australia plagiarises New Zealand’s flag
1923 - Vegemite is invented when yeast is accidentally mixed with wombat faeces
1932 - Australia’s military declares war on emus, and loses
1953 - Bob Hawke sets a new world record for skolling a yardie, which remains the single greatest achievement by an Australian
1960 - Future anti-boat people PM Tony Abbott arrives in Australia by boat
1967 - PM Harold Holt is eaten by a water dingo
1973 - The White Australia policy is abolished as Australia starts pretending it’s not racist
1979 - The release of Mad Max, a famous documentary about Australia
1985 - Rolf Harris presents the child abuse prevention video Kids Can Say No! (But I Hope They Don’t)
1997 - Future PM Scott Morrison shits his pants in Engadine Macca’s
2013 - Swino the pig drinks three six-packs of beer and fights a cow
2015 - Tony Abbott munches an onion like it’s an apple, inadvertently revealing his reptilian nature
2016 - A pig called Apples and a kangaroo called Fuck It begin a sexual relationship
From our book Shit Towns of Australia, available in stores and online.
Shit Town Power Rankings
Perth, WA - Gang of teen thugs attack Australia Day party
Halls Gap, VIC - Nazi fucks invade tiny tourist town
Kurri Kurri, NSW - Idiot biffs accelerant at fire truck during emergency, creating fireball
Albury, NSW - Gronk armed with syringe holds up Woolworths
Maroochydore, QLD - Dad charged after throwing vibrator at sex shop employee
Townsville, QLD - MP knocked out in late-night nightclub fight
Ingleburn, NSW - Fish factory workers charged with stealing $4 million worth of salmon
Coolgardie, WA - Gold mill workers charged with stealing $1 million worth of gold ore
Glenbrook, NSW - Man injured after being attacked by goat
Port Pirie, SA - Still shit
This Week’s Fan Mail
See you next week — same shit time, same shit channel!
At least the second last one spelt "cunt" correctly.