Welcome to another exciting edition of the Shit Towns of Australia newsletter.
Last week we got you to vote for the town you wanted us to review next, between Queensland crappers Emerald and Roma. The winner (or loser?), with 57% of the vote, is…
Shit Town: Emerald
Emerald earned its name from its early reliance on mining gemstones but its main industry is now coal mining, so a more appropriate moniker might be ‘Coalville’, ‘Soottown’ or ‘Main Reason the Entire Planet is Going to Die a Fiery Death City’. Instead, all the towns in the area are named like bogans’ daughters: Emerald, Sapphire, Rubyvale and Schapelle. Emerald also produces large volumes of cotton to send to Bangladesh for child slaves to make into T-shirts to send back to Australia. Aside from profiting from the hard work of miners and minors, the town is known for its frequent floods, which are ideal for washing off the several layers of tropical sweat mixed with filthy coal dust that normally coats every Emeraldian.
Emerald’s most prominent attraction is a giant version of Van Gogh’s painting Sunflowers perched on an oversized easel, a tribute to the town’s long history of self-harm. Another item of interest is a piece of fossilised wood outside the Town Hall estimated to be 250 million years old, making it slightly younger than the majority of Emerald’s residents. Local water hole Lake Maraboon is famously three times larger than Sydney Harbour and ten times as shit. Popular among watersports enthusiasts and anglers, Maraboon is a great place to get impaled on a hook or have a large man piss in your face. As the ‘Gateway to the Outback’, Emerald is also a convenient place to bury any dead backpackers you might have rattling around in your car boot.
Throwback: Broken Hill
More of a shanty town than a city, Broken Hill is a bunch of decaying buildings clustered around a slag heap on the edge of the outback. The ‘Broken’ in its name comes from the fact that the entire place is a mining-depleted toxic wasteland, from the boarded-up shops and abandoned mines to the corrugated iron shacks that pass as dwellings, to the undrinkable drinking water, to the playgrounds coated in poisonous lead dust. Even the hill after which the town is named is long gone. Broken Hill has a pace of life so slow that if it were a person it would have been switched off a long time ago. The only businesses still operating are a phenomenal number of pubs—in fact, Broken Hill’s official motto is ‘Our drinking town has a mining problem’.
Despite being located in New South Wales, Broken Hill is actually closer to Adelaide than Sydney, a fate most people wouldn’t wish on their worst enemy. However, geography is irrelevant to the uneducated and solipsistic inhabitants of Broken Hill, who live in a state of blissful ignorance of the outside world, simply referring to everywhere else as ‘away’. Broken Hillbillies are so befuddled that they even observe the wrong state’s time.
Broken Hill is famous for ‘cheese slaw’, an unholy melange of cheddar, carrot and emu semen that only the most depraved individuals would claim is food. The city’s proudest points of interest are the Big Ant (a truly disappointing spectacle), the Big Bench (a totally impractical seating arrangement) and the Living Desert Sculptures (a series of sandstone chunks surrounded by a fuck tonne of nothing). The region served as the principal filming location for Mad Max 2, making use of its post-apocalyptic landscape and resident tribes of feral bogans and motorcycling gimps. The local community radio station is called 2Dry FM, a dual reference to the dusty shithole’s desert climate and lack of a sustainable water source. Broken Hill is less FIFO and more FIROITNSITNTBSA (Fly In, Run Out Into The Night Screaming In Terror Never To Be Seen Again).
From our book Shit Towns of Australia, available in stores and online.
Shit Town Power Rankings
Logan, QLD - Fuckwit throws acid in bus driver’s face
Annandale, NSW - Real estate agent allegedly attacks women with samurai sword while hopped up on Viagra
Adelaide, SA - Gronk severs artery while punching car windscreen; man to face court after driving with hand-painted plates including the words ‘not stolen’; another man caught driving with home-made number plate; jaywalking koala causes 6-car pile-up
Alice Springs, NT - Massive gang of children attack strangers in the street; feral youth throw bottles and pull hair of bar staff
Albury, NSW - Gronk thumps ex-partner after she wins race for last can of beer
Townsville, QLD - Gronk smashes 2km stretch of shop windows
Orange, NSW - Pest caught wanking in clothing shop
Perth, WA - Hoon charged with breaking into Optus Stadium and tearing up pitch with ute during lockdown; alleged burglar charged with not wearing mask
Ballarat, VIC - Teen pleads guilty to stealing power drill, crystal, cars, wheels and goat
Port Pirie, SA - Still shit