Welcome to another edition of the Shit Towns of Australia newsletter.
After you voted Australia’s shittest suburb and town for 2021, it’s now time to find out the shittest city. Will power rankings favourite Townsville take home its first national title, or will the state crapitals be too strong? Scroll to the end of this email to vote!
Also in this newsletter: our Roma and Mullumbimby write-ups from our brand new book which releases tomorrow, plus your weekly rankings and some Facebook feedback about our Campbelltown review.
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: Out Tomorrow!
Our new book Shit Towns of Australia: The Great Aussie Road Trip is out tomorrow! Look for it in stores (AUS & NZ) or buy it online:
Booktopia (Australia)
Book Depository (worldwide)
New NZ Book: Out Now!
In addition to our new Aussie road trip book, we’ve also just released a NZ version, Shit Towns of New Zealand: The Great Kiwi Tiki Tour. Available now in stores (AUS & NZ) or online:
Booktopia (Australia)
Mighty Ape (New Zealand)
Book Depository (worldwide)
Shit Town: Roma
They say that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but apparently Roma was. The Queensland crapper was clearly named after the Italian capital because it resembles a city that’s just been sacked by barbarians. Australia’s ‘Infernal City’ is inhabited largely by drug addicts (Queensland’s Romans prefer a glass barbie to a pizza oven), sexual deviants (fiddling with themselves while Roma burns) and grey-haired bogans driving around their fourteen-year-old girlfriends (when it comes to romance, Roma is less Romeo and Juliet and more Roman Polanski). When in Roma, don’t do as the Romans do or you’ll most likely wake up naked in a police cell with a long list of charges and a couple of new STDs.
Appropriately rhyming with such delightful words as coma, stoma and melanoma, Roma has been in the fast lane to oblivion since local coal seam gas projects ended. The town is now surrounded by fields full of idle earthmoving machines and littered with empty hotels and an airport that no one uses. Roma also features exorbitant rental prices despite being six hours from the ocean—the only time it has waterfront property is when the entire town floods every year. It’s no wonder that Roma was referred to by early settlers as ‘The Bungil’—or in other words, ‘The Fuck-Up’.
They say that all roads lead to Roma. Fortunately, that also means that all roads lead out again. Take one.
From our new book Shit Towns of Australia: The Great Aussie Road Trip, available to pre-order now.
Throwback: Mullumbimby
Nestled in the arse-backwards Northern Rivers region, Mullumbimby is an escape from the social decorum and modern conveniences of the First World. It’s known for its ‘hippie ethos’, a simple and deluded way of life that’s essentially an elaborate ploy for blokes with male pattern baldness to root confused women in their early twenties. The town is infested by all manner of deodorant dodgers, from dole-bludging ‘artists’ to preachy vegans and hairy nudists, as well as increasing numbers of sea changing C-list celebrities and trustafarian big-city rejects priced out of Byron Bay, desperately trying to live a ‘hippie lifestyle’ by opening pretentious cafes and dangling some beads from the rear-view mirrors of their $140K Land Rovers.
Mullumbimby is the ideal place to do some tantric yoga while writing a snarky tweet about how microwave popcorn causes schizophrenia, try to cure your venereal disease with reiki, or sample some local artisanal methamphetamine. In fact, you can get just about anything there (except a steak, a shower, a useful education or a flu shot). A popular local attraction is the Crystal Castle, which despite its name is not a meth lab but actually a hippie wonderland where you can get your chakras realigned if you accidentally used 5G to download your latest conspiracy video.
Mullumbimby’s major industry is euphemistically called ‘alternative health’ or ‘wellness’, which is ironic because the town’s health stats are nothing to trumpet, with life expectancy, child mortality and rates of all cancers worse than the national averages. In fact, Mullumbimby’s diseases are so advanced that it already has COVID-22. It’s no coincidence that ‘Measlebimby’ is also the anti-vaxxer capital of Australia, with the average level of scientific literacy lying somewhere between Donald Trump and Paleo Pete. Most residents are terrified of immunisations but would happily fill their bodies with frog poison if their shaman told them to. Nevertheless, the same Mullumbimbos were no doubt first to put their hands up for a coronavirus vaccination when their magic vibration machines and herbal butt plugs inexplicably failed to do the job.
From our new book Shit Towns of Australia: The Great Aussie Road Trip, available to pre-order now.
Shit Town Power Rankings
St Kilda, VIC — Deadshit dickheads bash penguin to death
Port Pirie, SA — Couple caught rooting in cemetery
Penrith, NSW — Groom pepper sprayed and arrested after his proposal to root wedding guest descends into violence
Townsville, QLD — Four cops injured while breaking up fights in one night; carjacker and victim stab each other a bunch of times
Adelaide, SA — Teen tripping on LSD bites cop’s knee after being found in pool of his own piss
Childers, QLD — Local mum abuses pub staff, smashes window, throws glass shards, bites man’s thumb, spits at ambos
Gabbadah, WA — Ute snapped hooning at 119km/h with beer-drinking, bird-flipping gronk on bonnet
Gladstone, QLD — Pregnant woman threatens to blow up cop shop
Point Clare, NSW — Council crushes old lady’s car and everything in it without warning
Yeppoon, QLD — Teen pest calls 000 to sexually harass operator
Fan Mail: Campbelltown
Vote: Australia’s Shittest City
Click/tap on a city’s name below to vote. Voting closes and winner announced Monday 22/11. Only your first vote is recorded, so don’t fuck it up.
What is Australia’s Shittest City?