Congratulations to New South Wales on being voted Shit State of the Year! NSW saw off some fierce competition from Queensland and Victoria to take the 2021 title. Here are the final results:
New South Wales: 26%
Queensland: 23%
Victoria: 22%
Australian Capital Territory: 9%
Western Australia: 9%
South Australia: 5%
Northern Territory: 4%
Tasmania: 2%
In this week’s newsletter: we share some more content from our new Aussie and NZ travel books, plus some of the response to our Bathurst 1000 review and your weekly rankings.
Don’t miss next week’s STOA newsletter to vote in the final poll of 2021, as the country’s shittest suburb, town, city and state face off for the title of Supreme Shithole of the Year! 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)
Top 25 Shit Town Songs
We’ve got your Aussie road trip soundtrack covered with this playlist of famous songs about Australia’s shit towns.
6ix9ine—‘Yeppoonani’
AC/DC—'It’s Geelong Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll)’
The Association—'Along Comes Maryborough’
The Beatles—'Albury Fields Forever’
The Beatles—'Adelaidy Madonna’
Bill Haley & His Comets—'Rockhampton Around the Clockhampton’
Daft Punk—'One Moree Time’
Dire Straits—'Brothers in Armidale’
Bob Dylan—'Cessnockin’ on Heaven’s Door’
Green Day—‘Boulevard of Broken Hill’
Elton John—'Rocket Mandurah’
Tom Jones—'What’s New, Pussykatoomba?’
Metallica—'For Whom the Ballarat Tolls’
Metallica—'Wherever I May Roma’
Mark Morrison—'Return of the Mackay’
Johnny Nash—'I Kempsey Clearly Now’
The Notorious B.I.G.—'Moe Money Moe Problems’
Queen—'I Want to Break Fremantle’
The Rolling Stones—'Wild Horshams’
The Sex Pistols—'God Save the Queanbeyan’
Simon and Garfunkel—'Murray Bridge Over Troubled Water’
Frank Sinatra—'Newcastle, Newcastle’
Will Smith—'Just the Toowoomba’
Soundgarden—'Pretty Noosa’
Britney Spears—'Hit Me Baby Lismore Time’
From our new book Shit Towns of Australia: The Great Aussie Road Trip, out now in stores and online.
Throwback: Goulburn
A reluctant piss stop for travellers on the Hume Highway, Goulburn was proclaimed Australia’s first inland city in 1863—although it was quickly stripped of this title due to being less of a city and more of a shithole. It was once again proclaimed a city in 1885, making it the only place in Australia to have been declared a city twice. Although it has not been declared a city since, it continues to be declared a shithole at every opportunity.
Goulburn’s best claim to fame is the world’s largest concrete sheep, an achievement approximately on par with doing the biggest poo in your pants. Covered from head to hoof in flabby folds, the Big Merino looks more like a malignant tumour than a farm animal. Unbelievably, the monstrous monument was modelled on a real ram, proving that the livestock in Goulburn are just as inbred as the locals. Fun fact: the Big Merino is believed to be the only building in Australia with visible gonads.
Goulburn’s next major tourist attraction is the Goulburn Correctional Centre, the highest-security prison in Australia. This makes Goulburn the home of some of the country’s most reprehensible individuals including terrorists, mass murderers and Todd Carney. It’s also home to the New South Wales Police Academy, located a short distance from the prison, which is convenient given that half of its graduates eventually end up there.
With mass amounts of fuck-all to do in Goulburn, local losers are forced to resort to such tedious tasks as playing twelve-fingered banjo ballads, doing endless laps of Auburn Street or trying to get into the ‘Dirty Bird’ in their pyjamas. The city is also known as Gouldilocks because it’s always either too hot or too cold. Other problems include constant droughts, relentless wind, a pervasive stench of horse shit, and being close to Canberra.
From our new book Shit Towns of Australia: The Great Aussie Road Trip, out now in stores and online.
Shit Holidays: Franz Josef Glacier
Glaciers are boring. Their name is a synonym for moving so slowly as to be imperceptible. They’re basically what would happen if an avalanche decided to have a lie down. This makes glaciers the ideal attraction for simple-minded folk who are impressed by several million tonnes of frozen water not doing very much not very quickly.
New Zealand’s premier glacier is Franz Josef, named after a German pest who never set foot in New Zealand, which makes a change from naming things after English pests who never set foot in New Zealand. Franz Josef is sometimes confused with Tranz Josef, the well-known Auckland drag queen. Because all glaciers look the same, it is also frequently confused with the nearby Fox Glacier — even the world’s top glaciologists don’t know which is which.
A big selling point for Franz Josef Glacier is that it is one of the most accessible glaciers in the world, which is a bit like being the most grabbable turd in the toilet. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Fortunately, Franz Josef’s days as a terrible tourist attraction are numbered. The giant Popsicle is suffering from a case of rapid shrinkage ironically caused by global warming, as opposed to ordinary shrinkage which is caused by colder temperatures. Get disappointed while you still can!
From our new book Shit Towns of New Zealand: The Great Kiwi Tiki Tour, available now.
Fan Mail: Bathurst 1000
Shit Town Power Rankings
Frankston, VIC — Grub smears human shit over entrance to charity shop after being asked to verify vaccination status
Windang, NSW — Maniac arrested after shooting at randoms and taking hostage in dive shop
Gold Coast, QLD — Tradie bites pub employee and spits at RSL worker in separate pokie rage incidents; two stabbed during hoon meet; gronk sneaks into Queensland to meet a girl, buys stolen car, flees cops, crashes car, jumps in canal
Townsville, QLD — 15-year-old girl arrested after school stabbing; pest presses stranger’s doorbell while jacking off
Perth, WA — Bloke allegedly stabbed in middle of highway, pair of drivers punch on in middle of road
Albany, WA — Pizza delivery driver carjacked by axe-wielding kid
Merbein, VIC — War memorial pine tree cut down and stolen from cemetery
Murray Bridge, SA — Grub pisses in shop’s Chupa Chups display before crashing into multiple vehicles in car park
Ayr, QLD — Gronk responds to being denied service in shop by whipping his balls out
Port Pirie, SA — Still shit
Funny thing about the Goulburn sheep - they had to re-do the ball sack. The original one looked very similar to human balls but it was pointed out that sheep ball sacks don't look like that. So it was castrated and a new sack was created.