STOA Newsletter #39
Vote for Australia's Shittest Suburb + Werribee Review
Welcome to another edition of the Shit Towns of Australia newsletter.
This week, we begin the national finals of the Shit Town Showdown, our epic year-long quest to find Australia’s shittest suburb, town, city and state for 2021. We begin with the vote for Australia’s Shittest Suburb, featuring the winners of this year’s regional suburb polls. Scroll to the end of this email to vote!
Also this week: a brand new write-up for Werribee in Victoria, a WA throwback, and your weekly rankings.
If you have mates who are keen to vote in future polls or stay up-to-date with all our content, get them to subscribe at this link: shittownsofaustralia.substack.com/subscribe
New Book
Pre-order Shit Towns of Australia: The Great Aussie Road Trip:
Booktopia (Australia)
Mighty Ape (New Zealand)
Book Depository (worldwide)
Shit Town: Werribee
A former country town that in recent times has become a commuter dormitory, Werribee is where Melbourne stores the riffraff that were too ratshit for Broadmeadows. It’s now full of ferals who were funnelled out of gentrifying city suburbs by rising rents, resulting in horrendous traffic, soaring crime and an abundance of bogans. Werribee is Australia’s capital of welfare fraud, which is so prevalent that the cops have set up stalls in shopping centres where locals can dob in a dole cheat. A particularly dero part of Werribee is ‘the Birdcage’, an urban jungle that earned its name because most of its streets are named after birds. Unfortunately, during a trip down Kookaburra Crescent or Budgie Court, the only bird you are likely to see is a Ford Falcon abandoned on a nature strip.
Werribee’s visitor attractions are all crammed into Werribee Park, whose features include a mansion haunted by the ghost of the owner who topped himself due to living in Werribee, and the Werribee Open Range Zoo. Most of the zoo’s animals have taken on the characteristics of true Werribeeans, which is fantastic if you want to see a giraffe that smells like shit or a hippopotamus that’s really good at lodging dodgy Centrelink forms. The suburb’s most famous feature is the Western Treatment Plant, a gargantuan sewage facility that deals to most of Melbourne’s jobbies and gives Werribee and its inhabitants their distinctive stench. The massive poo plant means Werribee is both literally and figuratively a shit town.
From our new book Shit Towns of Australia: The Great Aussie Road Trip, available to pre-order now.
Throwback: Broome
Languishing in northern WA, the most forgotten part of the most forgotten state, Broome is an ideal destination if you have committed a terrible crime and need to hide out somewhere where the locals have the natural curiosity of a dead echidna. Popular activities in Broome include committing welfare fraud, hosing condoms off boats and getting arrested for interfering with a camel. The town’s official sport is Red Can Green Can, a simple game otherwise known as ‘competitive alcoholism’.
Broome is famous for having beaches that look like a postcard, a neat trick that fools hordes of backpackers and Instagram whores into flocking to the town during the dry season, not realising that the rest of town looks more like the set for a film about a zombie apocalypse. When they reach the beach, they usually find that the sea has retreated a hundred metres, the sand is covered in camels and the only people actually using the water are the coastguard looking for boat people to torpedo. The best strip of sand is Cable Beach, so named because it’s the most popular place for locals to lay a cable. Upon leaving, tourists soon find that they have sand and red dust throughout their belongings and ingrained in every bodily crevice, which is probably why the place is called Broome.
Broome’s history is entwined with pearl diving, a job so safe and rewarding that it was initially given to enslaved Indigenous people and then whatever immigrant group happened to be on the bottom rung at the time. The town was attacked four times by the Japanese during World War II, but despite the Japs’ best efforts it managed to cling on like a stubborn skiddy on the bowl, where it remains—defiantly shit—to this day.
From our book Shit Towns of Australia, available in stores and online.
Shit Town Power Rankings
Ipswich, QLD — Gronk uses stolen front end loader to ram-raid motorbike shop before fleeing cops along suburban streets and train tracks; 5 stabbed in house brawl
Hobart, TAS — Covid-positive illegal traveller causes lockdown by absconding from quarantine; scat burglars busted breaking into sewage plant
Batemans Bay, NSW — Pair of 17-year-old psychos charged after allegedly beating 14 kangaroos to death
Western Sydney, NSW — Despos cram into multiple Kmarts for midnight superspreader sales
Townsville, QLD — Mum jailed for attacking daughter’s boyfriend with baseball bat; kids set fire to gas bottles at busy shop; multiple mass brawls in streets and shopping centres
Queenstown, TAS — Suspicious tyre fire shrouds town in toxic smoke
Melbourne, VIC — Pair jailed for sneaking into WA for footy match; mad gronk accused of trying to burn down 5G tower and digging hole to imprison Premier
Gold Coast, QLD — Woman charged after allegedly issuing hundreds of fake covid medical exemptions
Mildura, VIC — Cheeky chap rents car for 2 days, drives to Albany WA and keeps it for 8 months; grog monster steals $5000 of wine while shitfaced
Port Pirie, SA — Still shit
Vote: Australia’s Shittest Suburb
Click/tap on a suburb’s name below to vote. Voting closes and winner announced Monday 25/10. Only your first vote is recorded, so don’t fuck it up.
What is Australia’s Shittest Suburb?