STOA Newsletter #44
Shit City of the Year + Northern Beaches Review
Congratulations to Townsville on being voted Shit City of the Year for 2021! Voters rewarded the North Queensland craphole for its domination of the Shit Town Power Rankings this year with a landslide victory. Here are the final results:
Townsville, QLD: 44%
Sydney, NSW: 15%
Melbourne, VIC: 13%
Canberra, ACT: 8.5%
Adelaide, SA: 7.5%
Perth, WA: 5.5%
Darwin, NT: 4.5%
Hobart, TAS: 2%
Check out our Townsville review here (hit the link and scroll down).
In this week’s newsletter: we review Sydney’s Northern Beaches, mark Schoolies Week by revisiting the Goldie, and share another excerpt from our new New Zealand travel book.
Don’t miss next week’s newsletter to vote for Australia’s Shittest State! If you know anyone who’d want in on this vote, get them to sign up at this link: shittownsofaustralia.substack.com/subscribe
New Book: Out Now!
Our new book Shit Towns of Australia: The Great Aussie Road Trip is out now! Look for it in stores (AUS & NZ) or buy it online:
Booktopia (Australia)
Mighty Ape (New Zealand)
Book Depository (worldwide)
Shit Town: Northern Beaches
Extending from Port Jackson to Broken Bay and taking in some of Sydney’s most expensive shit suburbs such as Manly, Dee Why and Palm Beach, the Northern Beaches is a bastion of self-important snobbery with a side of paranoia.
The region is the natural habitat of some of the worst types of Sydneysiders: CEOs in board shorts, upper-class hipsters, Insta-sluts, trophy wives, yoga-obsessed anti-vaxxers, baby boomer slumlords and Tony Abbott. It’s also full of drongo surfer stereotypes who refuse to cross the bridge under any circumstances but will happily stab you for the perfect wave. Fortunately for the residents of the rest of Sydney, those who live on the ‘Insular Peninsula’ rarely travel south, acting like they are surrounded by an impenetrable moat rather than at the other end of the A8.
Despite its nauseatingly posh veneer, the Northern Beaches is actually a festering hotbed of crime, with offences ranging from rampant tax evasion to buying Paleo Pete books to the filming of Home and Away. It is also guilty of the heinous crime of almost touching the Central Coast—indeed, large chunks of the Northern Beaches are basically Gosford with more disposable income and less hepatitis.
From our new book Shit Towns of Australia: The Great Aussie Road Trip, out now in stores and online.
Throwback: Gold Coast
The Gold Coast fancies itself as Australia’s version of Las Vegas, which is true because it’s a tacky tourist trap adorned with fake tits, a shit casino and an unending parade of timeshare presentations. The cluster of hotels masquerading as a city is where Australia keeps its unemployed Kiwi scaffolders while they wait for their shot at a third-rate reality show, and has-been strippers with multiple children to multiple men from multiple outlaw motorcycle gangs. If you are looking to get a shit neo-tribal tattoo or contract some novel form of super chlamydia then the Gold Coast is probably your place!
Given that it’s Australia’s entertainment capital, the Gold Coast is filled with a plethora of such options, with the only downside being that they are all tacky and shit. On the Gold Coast, fine dining is ‘all-you-can-eat pancakes’ and a fun day out with the family features theme parks with worse safety standards than a Malaysian airliner. Popular staples of Gold Coast nightlife include visiting a vampire-themed cabaret staffed entirely by people who look like they recently failed HIV tests, getting attacked by a lower grade league player with ‘roid rage’, or being thrown off a balcony after a Tinder date gone wrong. A popular event on the Gold Coast is ‘Schoolies Week’, which gives high school kids the chance to experiment with alcohol poisoning and tradies from Logan the chance to experiment with getting passed-out high school girls into the back of their van.
The Gold Coast hosted the 2018 edition of the Commonwealth Games, an event that used to exist only so Britain’s former colonies could see who had the fastest slaves and now only exists to give white people who are too shit for the Olympics the chance to win medals, making it the Caucasian Special Olympics. The event celebrated the city’s rich sporting history, which includes multiple failed professional franchises across at least three sports.
From our book Shit Towns of Australia, available in stores and online.
Shit Holidays: Tongariro Alpine Crossing
Hiking is for nerds, Germans and prisoners of war. As one of the most popular single-day hikes in the world, New Zealand’s Tongariro Alpine Crossing attracts a steady stream of each. With endless lines of hikers and limited facilities on the route, the Crossing has in recent times become known as much for steaming piles of poo on the path as for its stunning alpine scenery.
The Tongariro Alpine Crossing involves walking across an active volcano, a completely safe activity that has never posed a danger for any tourists ever. If weaving your way through an apocalyptic volcanic landscape sounds like your cup of liquid magma, then the Tongariro Alpine Crossing is for you!
Popular activities on the trail include being scalded by a hot spring, violating cultural prohibitions and collapsing due to a medical event. If you’ve ever wanted to be the subject of a search and rescue operation then the Tongariro Alpine Crossing is ideal. Previously known as the Tongariro Crossing, the ‘Alpine’ bit was added to dissuade tourists from attempting the hike in jandals and rugby shorts after a big night on the turps.
The Tongariro Alpine Crossing takes about eight hours to complete, which is about seven hours and fifty minutes too long.
From our new book Shit Towns of New Zealand: The Great Kiwi Tiki Tour, available now.
Fan Mail: Roma
Shit Town Power Rankings
Townsville, QLD — Stolen car destroys staff cars at youth detention centre before ram-raiding store; pest accused of wanking in multiple cafes; Townsville voted Shit City of the Year
Perth, WA — Knife-wielding numpty charged after allegedly threatening to kill deli staff if they didn’t cook him hot chips; Falcon owner caught doing 243km/h in 100 zone
Ballarat, VIC — Man hit in face with meat cleaver
Gold Coast, QLD — Man stabbed after coming to aid of elderly neighbour
Portland, VIC — Passenger of car that drove off cliff accused of assaulting cops with a tree branch
Adelaide, SA — Woman absconds from quarantine after entering state on stolen ID
Hobart, TAS — Aussie cricket captain quits after being caught sending pics of his middle stump
Kerang, VIC — Driver to face court after cops impound his motorised esky
Geelong, VIC — Teens get stuck on carnival ride 35m in the air for over 3 hours
Port Pirie, SA — Still shit