STOA Newsletter #28
QLD's Shittest Town + Deception Bay + New Book
Congratulations to Caboolture on being voted Queensland’s Shittest Town for 2021! Cabo inherits Queensland’s brown town crown from Logan, which has been shifted to the new Shittest City category (vote next week). Here are the full results:
Caboolture: 20%
Mount Isa: 14%
Rockhampton: 9%
Gympie: 6.5%
Morayfield: 6%
Mackay: 5.5%
Gladstone: 5%
Hervey Bay: 5%
Bundaberg: 4%
Maryborough: 4%
Innisfail: 4%
Bowen: 3%
Kingaroy: 3%
Yeppoon: 3%
Dalby: 2.5%
Nambour: 2%
Roma: 2%
Emerald: 1.5%
Scroll down to revisit our Caboolture review, as well as a brand new write-up for its shit neighbour Deception Bay.
Don’t miss next week’s newsletter to vote for Queensland’s Shittest City — featuring Brisbane, Cairns, Gold Coast, Ipswich, Logan, Moreton Bay, Redlands, Sunshine Coast, Toowoomba and Townsville! If you know anyone who’d want in on this vote, get them to sign up at this link: shittownsofaustralia.substack.com/subscribe
New Book!
In case you missed our announcement on Friday, we are stoked to announce our second Shit Towns of Australia book releases 16 November!
Aussies love a road trip. Packing up the ute and slogging for hours or days to get to some town that’s only slightly less shit than where you came from is just part of living on the sprawling expanse of mediocrity that is Australia.
Shit Towns of Australia: The Great Aussie Road Trip presents seven epic routes that together take in the most iconic shitholes in the country, from Bondi to the bush, Blacktown to the black stump and back. From the authors who brought you the ridiculous bestseller Shit Towns of Australia, this book covers dozens more crap towns and shitty city suburbs, as well as quintessential events, regional foods and other nuggets of knowledge to inform your turdy itinerary. Plus a selection of our best Facebook fan mail.
Whether you’re keen for a shit trip, a crap lap or a sewer tour, The Great Aussie Road Trip will help ensure you have a terrible time on your travels.
‘Not funny at all, it’s actually quite insulting. They’re just trying to make a quick buck.’
Kon Vatskalis, Darwin Lord Mayor
‘Bugger off!’
Leon Stephens, Port Pirie Mayor
‘A bloody good time.’
Ozzy Man Reviews
Pre-order now!
Booktopia (Australia)
Mighty Ape (New Zealand)
Book Depository (worldwide)
Shit Suburb: Deception Bay
Wedged between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast and shunned by both, the municipality of Moreton Bay is a cluster of some of Australia’s shittiest suburbs including Caboolture, Morayfield and Strathpine, making it Bogan Voltron. Among its worst components is Deception Bay.
Deception Bay is so named because early British settlers were deceived into thinking it was a place worth living. Incidentally, ‘deception’ also happens to be a portmanteau of the suburb’s two principal pastimes: depression and conception. Populated by a clot of gronks who were pushed out of Brisbane by rising living costs and increased police presence, Depression Bay is a sloppy shit of a suburb that spoils some prime seaside real estate (if you can describe an endless stretch of mud as ‘prime’). Along with Logan and Ipswich to the south, Conception Bay and its mongrel Moreton neighbours ensure that Queensland’s capital is encircled by a metaphorical moat of shit. The suburb regularly makes the news for criminal activity, continually surprising Brisbanites who are usually blissfully unaware that anything exists north of Brighton.
Local attractions in the Deception Bay area include shipwrecks, car wrecks and plenty of pubs with cement floors for hosing the blood off. There are numerous entertainment options, such as spray painting a cock and balls on someone’s car or getting in a fight at a shopping mall. Or you could go for a scenic stroll through the decaying housing estates and get beaten up for your shoes. D-Bay’s greatest asset of all is its good sealed roads and easy access to the Bruce Highway, ideal for driving away and never coming back.
From our new book Shit Towns of Australia: The Great Aussie Road Trip, available to pre-order now.
Throwback: Caboolture
Sitting on top of Brisbane like a sweaty arse on a toilet seat, Caboolture is a nightmarish mish-mash of deros and rednecks, a feral hellhole that is arguably more Logan than Logan. Cabo’s population exploded when Brisbane evicted its housos, New Zealanders and other undesirables before the World Expo 88, causing the once sleepy hamlet of Caboolture to devolve into a slum of epic proportions. As unplanned as most of its pregnancies, the town is now an ungroomed patch of urban pube sprouting around a haggard highway and crawling with the lice of society.
Caboolture is the nation’s capital of welfare fraud, animal cruelty and playing pokies in your pyjamas. Other common hobbies include blowing up gelignite at sportsgrounds for shits and giggles, fishing up a body from a waterway, or doing a shoey on Toohey. The home town of Keith Urban hosts an annual country music festival and ‘ute muster’, attracting inbreds and simpletons from across the state. Aside from Urban, Cabo’s biggest celebrities are the ‘Centrelink Cougar’, a middle-aged woman accused of seducing teenagers for their welfare money, and ‘Bottles’, a young lady famous for sticking bottles up herself at the Morayfield skatepark each weekend.
From our book Shit Towns of Australia, available in stores and online.
Shit Town Power Rankings
Sydney, NSW — Pair of pricks charged with punching police horses during mass gathering of covid deniers; GP charges $370 for free Pfizer shots
Ipswich, QLD — Alleged shooting and car ramming during mega brawl
Canberra, ACT — Gronk allegedly tries to stab man in the throat in middle of busy mall
Melbourne, VIC — Serial pest avoids prison after jizzing on strangers
Fraser Island, QLD — Naked Mexican tourist holds cop underwater, bites another and spits at paramedic while hopped up on mushies and weed
Cairns, QLD — Woman fined $500 for filming her dog licking peanut butter off her genitals; courier driver caught shitting in bag and dumping it in resident’s bin
Lakes Entrance, VIC — Police car rammed by stolen fire truck
Griffith, NSW — Drive-through covid testing clinic ransacked; driver flees after crashing outside courthouse; huge dick painted on high school
Townsville, QLD — Gronks burn down playground; sex toy theft spree continues
Port Pirie, SA — Still shit
Whitcoulls Top 100
Finally this week, a quick note on the Whitcoulls Top 100, a prestigious poll of readers' favourite books run by a New Zealand bookstore chain. We asked you to vote for our Shit Towns of New Zealand series, and you came through — we're pleased to announce that we made the list again, scraping in this time at #95. This sort of thing helps us to convince stores to stock our books and publishers to sign us up to write more, so thank you to everyone who voted for us, you bloody legends.