STOA Newsletter #143
Shit Town of the Year Revealed
Shit Town of the Year
Congratulations to Toowoomba on being voted Australia’s Shit Town of the Year for 2023!
Toowoomba follows Townsville (2021-22) and Logan (2019-20) in winning the prestigious award, extending Queensland’s stranglehold on the brown crown.
Here are the final standings:
Toowoomba, QLD: 23.7%
Blacktown, NSW: 17.9%
Launceston, TAS: 17.8%
Capital Hill, ACT: 9.2%
Adelaide, SA: 8.7%
Kununurra, WA: 8.7%
Darwin, NT: 7.3%
Glen Waverley, VIC: 6.7%
Commiserations to all the shit towns that weren’t quite shit enough to take it out in 2023. Better luck next year!
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New Zealand’s Shittest Town
Meanwhile, across the ditch, New Zealand has crowned its own Shit Town of the Year. Congratulations, Palmerston North!
This year, Palmy proved it’s still as just as shit as when John Cleese called it the suicide capital of the world, with the Spanish FIFA Women’s World Cup team forced to pack up and flee their training base in July due to interminable boredom. Evidently, voters agreed.
See more on our Shit Towns of New Zealand Facebook page.
Shit Town: Broome
Languishing in northern WA, the most forgotten part of the most forgotten state, Broome is an ideal destination if you have committed a terrible crime and need to hide out somewhere where the locals have the natural curiosity of a dead echidna. Popular activities in Broome include committing welfare fraud, hosing condoms off boats and getting arrested for interfering with a camel. The town’s official sport is Red Can Green Can, a simple game otherwise known as ‘competitive alcoholism’.
Broome is famous for having beaches that look like a postcard, a neat trick that fools hordes of backpackers and Instagram whores into flocking to the town during the dry season, not realising that the rest of town looks more like the set for a film about a zombie apocalypse. When they reach the beach, they usually find that the sea has retreated a hundred metres, the sand is covered in camels and the only people actually using the water are the coastguard looking for boat people to torpedo. The best strip of sand is Cable Beach, so named because it’s the most popular place for locals to lay a cable. Upon leaving, tourists soon find that they have sand and red dust throughout their belongings and ingrained in every bodily crevice, which is probably why the place is called Broome.
Broome’s history is entwined with pearl diving, a job so safe and rewarding that it was initially given to enslaved Indigenous people and then whatever immigrant group happened to be on the bottom rung at the time. The town was attacked four times by the Japanese during World War II, but despite the Japs’ best efforts it managed to cling on like a stubborn skiddy on the bowl, where it remains—defiantly shit—to this day.
From our book Shit Towns of Australia, available in stores and online.
Shit Town Power Rankings
Townsville, QLD — Mum with baby attacked by axe-wielding maniac and knife-wielding woman in own garage in broad daylight; specialist police called in after pack of feral kids aged 11-16 steal 79 cars in a week, commit spate of ram-raids and ram 5 cop cars; ambulances almost rammed by stolen cars twice in 2 days; feral kids trying to steal rental cars at airport bash man with baseball bat; little shits post footage of themselves destroying elderly woman’s car
Gold Coast, QLD — Mum avoids jail after rooting her pet dogs
Melbourne, VIC — Disgruntled tradie jailed after kidnapping boss’s kids; dad and teenage sons accused of causing $1 million worth of damage by slingshotting marbles at windows on 87 buildings
Launceston, TAS — Pest previously sentenced for wanking to voices of call centre operators now sentenced for beating up his own dad
Trinity Beach, QLD — Lowlifes loot businesses during cyclone
Hobart, TAS — 12-year-old kids charged after allegedly robbing and bashing teen before trying to escape on bus; armed thugs crash 12-year-old autistic boy’s birthday party, steal his lizards
Rockhampton, QLD — Creep breaks into house and fucks vacuum cleaner
Devonport, TAS — Ferry passenger jailed after being caught with $50k worth of meth in his undies
Perth, WA — Pair of drongos stage 8-hour construction site standoff with cops, demanding alcohol, vapes and helicopter
Port Pirie, SA — Woman charged after allegedly running over man with tractor; still shit
See you for another shitty year in 2024!
So proud of Perth, it was a new low even by our standards. My favourite part was the 10 second footchase… like watching Usain Bolt with a case of leprosy.
The fucking maggots, who harm dogs, give them to me. I promise, their dog fucking days would be well and truly over. And those rotten little bastards in Townsville, just fucking shoot them, do the whole planet a favour.