Welcome to another edition of the Shit Towns of Australia newsletter.
This week, we’re running a poll to find Queensland’s Shittest Suburb. We’ve selected a shortlist of 18 suburbs based on your suggestions on Facebook, and I’m sure you’ll agree that it features some absolute shitters. Scroll to the end of this email to vote!
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Shit Town: Sale
Sale was originally named ‘Flooding Creek’ after some dimwit decided to knock up a town in the middle of a swamp at the confluence of several major waterways, then was surprised when the place duly flooded. The town was later renamed to Sale in honour of locals’ habit of selling anything not nailed down to pay for their next piss-up, a tradition that continues to this day.
Sale’s most notable landmark is the La Trobe Swing Bridge, Australia’s largest outdoor venue for wife-swapping gatherings. Along with the town’s carp-infested canal, the crusty old contraption was constructed in the 1880s after the local brains trust tried to turn the town into a trading port. The plan was unsuccessful on account of Sale being shit, and 30 kilometres inland.
Popular activities in Sale include walking at a brisk pace, piffing shopping trolleys into the canal, and lapsing into a coma due to stultifying boredom. Sale is so notoriously boring that it has recently become Victoria’s ice capital, as developing a crippling drug addiction is about the only thing that can make the Gippsland shitter tolerable.
Not content with frequent floods and rampant drug addiction, Sale also celebrates vaunted local founding father and piece of shit Angus McMillan with a sculpture commemorating his vital contributions to the Gippsland massacres. The appropriately hideous lump of rocks and concrete was apparently inspired by McMillan’s treasured hessian sack of human skulls that he kept as a charming keepsake of his killings. Locals have resisted calls to tear down the loathsome monument, supporting the theory that the further east you go in Gippsland, the redder the neck.
From our new book Shit Towns of Australia: The Great Aussie Road Trip, available to pre-order now.
Throwback: Brisbane
A sprawling subtropical shitburbia, ‘Brisvegas’ is a notorious cultural graveyard where high art is spray painting dicks on walls and fine dining is choosing not to use the drive-thru. The city manages the neat trick of combining small town attitudes with the crime and congestion of a major city, so is a great destination if you are in the mood to get mugged at knifepoint while being told to fuck off back to where you came from.
As well as being brain-achingly boring, Brisbane is prone to flooding and hot as buggery. The city spends a significant amount of time underwater yet always seems to be in drought. The heat is so oppressive that it makes residents do a whole range of irrational things, like casual racism and supporting the Broncos. Other popular pastimes include queueing up to suck off the Wally Lewis statue outside Suncorp or getting coward punched in Caxton Street by a moron in maroon. Brisbane is also overrun by all manner of pests including foxes, bats and New Zealanders.
Despite being known as ‘The River City’, Brisbane is in fact bisected by a dirty brown trickle that is more Missi-shitty than Mississippi. The river is recommended to anyone who gets off on gawking at a sludgy smear that looks like something on a men’s room wall. Crossing the ‘Brown Snake’ by car requires taking out a second mortgage to pay the hefty tolls on the imaginatively named Go Between Bridge. Brisvegans are also strangely proud of their beaches, despite the nearest being nearly two hours away in crippling traffic. The only strip of sand within the city limits is Streets Beach, a nasty man-made slurry pit full of used condoms and dead bin chickens. Another source of misplaced local pride is Brisbane-brewed XXXX, so named because Queenslanders can’t spell beer.
From our book Shit Towns of Australia, available in stores and online.
Fan Mail: Forster-Tuncurry
Shit Town Power Rankings
Sydney, NSW — Selfish shits with covid wag lockdown, infect Northern Rivers and Newcastle; python in Woolworths spice rack freaks out shoppers
Alice Springs, NT — Man rams car into pub, douses himself in petrol and runs off; drunk hoon hits five cars in Coles car park before crashing in intersection
Maitland, NSW — Covid testing clinic worker spat on by fuckwit with no front teeth
Melbourne, VIC — Dipshits face $350k in fines for engagement party with covid positives during lockdown; creep allegedly impersonates covid inspector, demands root from woman
Townsville, QLD — Bunch of kids aged 12-16 arrested after slew of violent carjackings, bikejackings, assaults, car torchings and stolen car crashes
Perth, WA — Blokes doing parkour on street furniture allegedly run down by mad gronk in Toyota Prado
Wyong, NSW — Hammer-wielding hooligan allegedly tries to steal two cars before carjacking taxi and crashing into police car
Dalby, QLD — Gronk allegedly strips in public, waves his willy around, throws beer glass at stranger and tries to fight security guards
Shepparton, VIC — Parents punch on outside school after their kids were caught brawling
Port Pirie, SA — Still shit
Vote: Queensland’s Shittest Suburb
Click/tap on a suburb’s name below to vote. Voting closes and winner announced Monday 30/8. Only your first vote is recorded, so don’t fuck it up.
What is Queensland’s Shittest Suburb?