Welcome again to the Shit Towns of Australia newsletter.
Last week you voted Armadale as Perth’s shittest suburb, and the Armadildos weren’t impressed! Read what the local MP had to say here.
This week, we turn our attention southeast, with our poll for Victoria’s Shittest Town. It’s our longest shortlist yet, with 18 towns vying for the brown crown, based on your nominations on Facebook and a few of our own. Note that some of your suggestions will instead appear in the next poll for Melbourne’s Shittest Suburb, and/or the following one for Victoria’s Shittest City. Scroll to the end of this email to vote!
Also this week, we revisit Perth’s fourth-shittest suburb Fremantle, and celebrate the trans-Tasman bubble by checking into Queenstown (the New Zealand one, not the shittest town in Tasmania).
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Throwback: Fremantle
Fremantle is known by a raft of different names, depending on whom you ask. To locals it’s ‘Freo’, as its resident meatheads are unable to process more than two syllables at a time. To its traditional owners it’s ‘Walyalup’, or ‘the place of crying’, as one look at the place is enough to make even the staunchest bogan burst into tears faster than Steve Smith at a press conference. To anyone else it’s ‘Fremongrel’, ‘Feralmantle’ or ‘that horrible place near Perth’.
Fremantle has a long history of hosting deadshits of various descriptions. The city was named after Charles Fremantle, a British naval officer and accused child rapist. It was later home to ruthless American pirate Bully Hayes (notorious for his crimes against humanity) and former AC/DC frontman Bon Scott (notorious for his crimes against music). The city celebrates Scott with a bronze statue, around which bogans congregate to pay tribute to their hero by drinking themselves into a paralytic state and urinating on his likeness. Other ‘Freakmantle’ inhabitants include smelly hippies, drug-addled beggars and vicious thugs who flood the central city at the first sign of dusk.
Fremantle’s AFL team is called the Dockers, which is gay slang for a sex act far too filthy to describe. Appropriately, the team is headquartered at Cockburn. Despite representing Fremantle, the Dockers could not bring themselves to set foot there, instead playing their home games in Perth.
Tourist activities in Fremantle include visiting a plethora of old prisons, swimming at a windswept beach in front of copious cranes and stacks of rusty shipping containers, or getting mugged by a meth-head.
From our book Shit Towns of Australia, available in stores and online.
Bubble Buddy: Queenstown
No visit to New Zealand is complete without a stop in the bustling tourism ripoffolis of Queenstown, which sees a steady stream of European freedom campers depositing their Fergburger turds on the ground and befuddled tourists driving on the wrong side of the road.
Originally an alpine village of about twelve inbred South Islanders, Queenstown’s resident population has exploded thanks to an influx of Aucklanders who decided to escape the rat race and turn a small alpine town into a yuppie-infested hellhole. Silicon Valley squillionaires and Wall Street shysters have also invaded, snapping up lakeside mansions as holiday homes. As a result, Queenstown’s cost of living has skyrocketed, forcing the city’s undesirables into surrounding settlements like Arrowtown and Cromwell, and ironically leaving the affluent invaders with a lack of poor people to act as servants/slaves.
Queenstown’s high costs are so depressing that the area’s most popular tourist activity is jumping off bridges. Other options include hurtling down a mountain on a flimsy sheet of fibreglass, hurtling down a mountain on two flimsy sheets of fibreglass, getting paralysed in a jet boating accident, or staying outside for half a day and becoming a human popsicle.
From our book Shit Towns of New Zealand, available in stores and online.
Shit Town Power Rankings
Brisbane, QLD — Gronk charged with stealing car with two kids inside; women’s rugby game called off after linesman attacks players
Richmond, VIC — Video appears to show Coles truckie being stabbed in road rage incident
Rockingham, WA — Woman charged with drink-driving school bus full of kids
Caloundra, QLD — Woman tests positive for covid after driving from Melbourne during Victorian lockdown
Townsville, QLD — Cops break up brawl involving flag pole and sticks; video shows girl in high school uniform ripping bong at car crash memorial; gronk tries to steal car while woman sitting in driver’s seat; Queensland pays $8m to get pumped in front of 30,000 onlookers
Hobart, TAS — Hoon caught doing 222km/h in 80 zone
Gold Coast, QLD — Serial pest caught wanking on main beach and public buses
Albany, WA — Genius jailed after turning up at court with machete and Darth Vader costume
Orange, NSW — Angry KFC customer in court for chucking potato and gravy at employee
Port Pirie, SA — Still shit
Vote: Victoria’s Shittest Town
Click/tap on a town’s name below to vote. Voting closes and winner announced Monday 21/6. Only your first vote is recorded, so don’t fuck it up.
What is Victoria’s Shittest Town?