Congratulations to Sydney on being voted New South Wales’ Shittest City for 2021! Shitney saw off some stiff competition to finish with almost a third of the vote. Sadney will take on Adelaide, Canberra, Darwin, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth and Townsville in the poll for Australia’s Shittest City later in the year. Here are the full NSW results:
Sydney (all of it): 31%
Blacktown: 13%
Canterbury-Bankstown: 8%
Northern Beaches: 6%
Newcastle: 5%
Penrith: 5%
Campbelltown: 5%
Central Coast: 5%
Sutherland Shire: 4%
Parramatta: 4%
Liverpool: 3%
Wollongong: 3%
Inner West: 3%
Lake Macquarie: 3%
Fairfield: 2%
Scroll down to revisit our Sydney review, right after a brand new write-up for the Queensland craphole Dalby. Also this week: more deranged fan mail, and Melbourne’s clusterfuck shitshow of a week dominates the power rankings.
Don’t miss next week’s newsletter to vote for New South Wales’ Shittest Suburb! If you know anyone who’d want in on this vote, get them to sign up at this link: shittownsofaustralia.substack.com/subscribe
Shit Town: Dalby
Most regional towns spruik themselves with the old cliché ‘where city meets country’. Dalby is more ‘where country meets country’ (or more accurately, ‘where incest meets boredom’). The town has a rich rural diversity, which means it stinks of at least four different types of animal shit. Dalby is so dull it makes the nearby retirement home of Toowoomba look like Surfers Paradise during schoolies (only with more pill-popping and even more orgies). Dalbatians’ main activities are growing grain to convert into alcohol and consuming the fruits of their labour in copious quantities to numb the existential horror of living in Dalby.
Dalby was largely settled by migrants from the Isle of Man in the mid-nineteenth century. However, the population didn’t really take off until migrants started arriving from the Isle of Woman. The town found a purpose in the early 1900s when it was used by the state government as a gulag for tuberculosis patients. In 1904, the council opened therapeutic thermal baths using artesian water from a local bore, which then closed in 1938 when people decided it was better to treat their ailments with medicine rather than by sitting in tepid water with a bunch of disease-addled Dalbetics (this modern twentieth-century wisdom is yet to reach New South Wales’ Northern Rivers).
Most towns have war memorials or statues of their founders. Dalby has a monument to the South American cactus moth, expressing the town’s gratitude to the insect for wiping out a plant they didn’t like. The ‘Mothument’ is one of two places in Dalby listed as tourist attractions on Wikipedia, along with the local cemetery. The best attraction is actually the road out of there, but being largely one lane and riddled with potholes, that’s also shit.
From our new book Shit Towns of Australia: The Great Aussie Road Trip, available to pre-order now.
Throwback: Sydney
Otherwise known as ‘London for Aussies who can’t handle a twenty-hour flight’, Sydney is a sweltering shit crucible beset by a confusing layout, horrific traffic and ever-increasing property prices that mean the only people who can really afford to live there are crooked investment bankers, crooked politicians and the children of crooked media moguls.
Sydney’s iconic landmarks are the Sydney Opera House (which was designed by a Dane), Sydney Harbour Bridge (which was designed by Scots) and Bondi Beach (which was nicked from the natives). In addition to Bondi, Sydney boasts an abundance of beaches, which would be great if not for the fact that most of its residents spend the majority of their time either working to pay outsized rent or mortgages or stuck in seemingly endless traffic jams. If you do find five minutes to visit a beach, it will be covered with tourists and Instagram models scrapping to take the perfect selfie. Nightlife is no longer an option after ‘Sadney’ implemented nonsensical lockout laws designed to curb Australia’s favourite nocturnal pastime: coward punching strangers while queuing for a dodgy kebab.
In many respects Sydney is actually a bunch of shit towns loosely amalgamated into a giant, sloppy, steaming shitropolis. The eastern suburbs are filled with ex-private-school boys driving midlife crisis machines, looking for their next trophy wife while avoiding being charged with insider trading. The northern beaches are filled with surfer stereotypes who refuse to cross the bridge under any circumstances and will happily stab you for the perfect wave. The inner west is filled with paleo-obsessed hipsters supping on a wide range of soy-based beverages while pursuing a career as a ‘social media influencer’ and letting their property developer parents pay their rent. Southern Sydney is where flag-wearing rednecks stage most of their race riots. While the majority of Sydneysiders like to pretend their city ends somewhere around Annandale, Greater Western Sydney is where they keep their bogans, benefit cheats and prospective ISIS recruits.
From our book Shit Towns of Australia, available in stores and online.
Fan Mail
Congrats to Benjamin from Bundaberg for winning the STOA Letter of the Week award (and also the Guinness World Record for World’s Longest Sentence).
Shit Town Power Rankings
Melbourne, VIC — Construction industry shut down after crybaby tradies throw a tanty; anti-lockdown morons (including one with covid) swarm war memorial; vaccination clinic for homeless forced to close after healthcare heroes spat on and abused by anti-vax arseholes; city hit by earthquake in pretty clear sign that God is sick of this shit
Brisbane, QLD — 40 temple goers brawl with swords, axes, bats and poles; grub films hundreds of people showering at public pools
Logan, QLD — Woman ploughs stolen car through cemetery while 6.5 times over alcohol limit; cops seek bogan after gender reveal burnout caught on dash cam
Adelaide, SA — Genius crashes into building after inhaling carbon monoxide while using tandoori oven in his car
Fitzroy Crossing, WA — Cop hospitalised after being rammed by 15-year-old in stolen Land Cruiser
Albury, NSW — Bogan does burnouts at cemetery because he didn’t like lockdown
Ballarat, VIC — Gronk arrested after stolen car gets bogged
Launceston, TAS — Drongo allegedly tries to flush $8600 down the dunny after cops turn up at his house
Gold Coast, QLD — Man acquitted of waving gun at family after court finds it was a thong
Port Pirie, SA — Still shit
New Book
Pre-order Shit Towns of Australia: The Great Aussie Road Trip:
Booktopia (Australia)
Mighty Ape (New Zealand)
Book Depository (worldwide)
I think Murwillumbah needs a mention.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-18/charlie-larter-manslaughter-sentence-james-paul-alderton/12465318?utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web