Welcome to another Shit Towns of Australia newsletter.
After giving Hervey Bay a serve, this week we’re giving the Shit Towns treatment to nearby Maryborough. Plus your weekly power rankings and some more fan mail.
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Shit Town: Maryborough
Not to be confused with its Victorian shit town namesake, the Queensland craphole of Maryborough is best known as the birthplace of Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers, who left when she was a small child and never returned because it was shit. Travers’ famously psychedelic book and subsequent film adaptations about a magical flying nanny were inspired by the author’s memories of her many drug-addled hallucinations as a toddler in the town. In fact, the series was originally called Fear and Loathing on the Fraser Coast. Mary Poppins even takes her first name from the town, while her last name is an unsubtle allusion to heroin poppies. Fun fact: the Mary Poppins song ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’ is actually about cocaine, ‘Stay Awake’ is about meth and ‘Feed the Birds’ is about public masturbation.
Mary Poppins is honoured with a statue and even themed traffic lights in Maryborough, the town’s way of acknowledging its sizeable population of opioid addicts. The preponderance of local violent criminals is celebrated in a similar way, with a giant shotgun-toting Ned Kelly looming over a servo, presumably with the intent of robbing it for a carton of durries.
The highlight of Maryborough’s social calendar is the annual Mary Poppins Festival, which is probably why the place is commonly known as ‘Maryboring’. Other popular nicknames include ‘Scaryborough’ and ‘Marry-Ya-Brother’, both of which are eerily appropriate for the pest-infested incest-fest of a joint. Locals prefer the label ‘the Heritage City of Queensland’, an odd marketing angle when your history consists of a bunch of Indigenous massacres, enslavement of South Sea islanders and Australia’s only outbreak of pneumonic plague. The heritage slogan is at least accurate in the sense that the town is full of old things—old buildings, old attitudes and old people.
From our book Shit Towns of Australia: The Great Aussie Road Trip, out now in stores and online.
Shit Town Power Rankings
Townsville, QLD — Mega gronk jailed for threatening neighbour with samurai sword, stripping nude then squeezing out a shit while being arrested; elderly hit-and-runner allegedly assaults witness and spits at her so hard that his dentures fall out; man caught with $1m of drugs drops phone in toilet after cops bust in while he’s taking a shit
Toowoomba, QLD — Menace pleads guilty to 42 crimes including escaping custody, assaulting cops and hospital staff and wanking in public park
Mackay, QLD — Pest faces court for public nudity, accuses cop of trying to grab his cock; creep sentenced for leaving mum and her kids notes offering money or drugs for sex
Nambour, QLD — Serial public wanker pleads guilty to jacking off in retirement home while wearing only women’s underwear and covered in vegetable oil
Adelaide, SA — Mongrels allegedly assault firefighters, threaten to set them alight; 16 kids hospitalised with suspected carbon monoxide poisoning from ice skating rink
Mount Gambier, SA — Vinnies manager flogs $15k from charity and spends it on meth
Kalgoorlie-Boulder, WA — Gronk jailed for chucking rock at hospital guard
Tweed Heads, NSW — Elderly woman carjacked by eshay across the road from police station
Robertson, NSW — Equestrian stood down for wearing mankini during event
Port Pirie, SA — Still shit
Wtf is happening in Qld 😅 devolving faster than SOA can keep up.
Wow, TownTown never fails to impress does it ??!!, it's going to have more weeks at No1 than Bryan Adams had in the 90's with 'Everything I do I do for you' (I hate that song).