STOA Newsletter #48

Supreme Shithole of the Year

Welcome to our final newsletter for 2021. In this issue: some more snippets from our new STOA book, our old STOA book and our new NZ book, plus your last Shit Town Power Rankings list for 2021, and some of this year’s previously unpublished fan mail.

With that out of the way, it’s an honour to announce the winner of last week’s poll for Supreme Shithole of the Year is … Townsville! The North Queensland crapper dominated this year’s Power Rankings, and was also voted Queensland’s Shittest City and Australia’s Shittest City. What a year for Towntown. Here are the final results of the Supreme Shithole poll:

Townsville: 36.5%
The entire state of New South Wales: 30%
Byron Bay: 20%
Mount Druitt: 13.5%

To all the suburbs, towns, cities and states that participated in our polls this year, better luck next time!

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

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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)

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Australia’s Worst Place Names

Bald Knob, QLD
Big Dick Bore, WA
Big Knob Waterhole, NT
Bonar Street, NSW, VIC & QLD
Boobs Flat, TAS
Booby Island, QLD
Boomers Bottom, TAS
Bottom Hole, TAS
Break Wind Reserve, SA
Bullshit Hill, SA
Bum Bum Creek, QLD
Burnt Pussy Mine, SA
Chinaman’s Knob, NSW & VIC
Cock Wash, SA
Dancing Dicks Creek, NSW
Dead Womans Hole, NSW
Diapur, VIC
Dirty Dick Creek, QLD
Double Knob, QLD
Finger Buttress, VIC
Funny Knob Creek, TAS
Goat Knob, NSW
Grey Dick Hill, NSW
Groper Grotto, SA
Guys Dirty Hole, TAS
Hopping Dicks Creek, NSW
Hooker Park, NSW
Horny Point, SA
Horse Knob, NSW
Innaloo, WA
Intercourse Island, WA
Licking Hole, NSW
Lovely Bottom, TAS
Minger Well, WA
Mossy Nipple Bend, TAS
Mount Breast, QLD
Mount Buggery, SA
Peculiar Nob, SA
Pensioners Bush, TAS
Pisspot Creek, TAS
Prickly Bottom, TAS
Shaving Holes Creek, NSW
Soily Bottom Point, NSW
Stinkhole, TAS
The Butts, TAS
The Nipples, TAS
Tittybong, VIC
Titwobble Lane, VIC
Wanka Road, QLD
Wanky Creek, NSW

From our new book Shit Towns of Australia: The Great Aussie Road Trip, out now in stores and online.

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Throwback: Albury-Wodonga

Photo credit: Bidgee/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 AU)

Conjoined siblings straddling two states, Albury and Wodonga are twin turds in a shit sandwich. Albury on the New South Wales side is the dominant shithole, while Victoria’s Wodonga is the smaller, less prosperous runt of the family. If Albury is where New South Wales dumps its undesirables, Wodonga is where Albury dumps theirs.

Together, Albury and Wodonga exist primarily as a defecation station for travellers between Sydney and Melbourne. The federal government tried to turn Albury-Wodonga into a major city in the 1970s but gave up after failing to convince anyone to move there—apparently, punters were not convinced by the blockbuster pitch of a bipolar climate, foul-smelling factories and mysterious diseases. Albury’s premier landmarks are a paper mill that bathes both cities in an intolerable stench and the nearby Ettamogah Pub, a run-down old family restaurant based on a cartoon. Wodonga’s best attempt at an attraction is the world’s largest rolling pin, which is about as impressive as a genital wart.

Perhaps the best sign of a truly shit town is when it has a disease named after it. Christmas Eye, also known as Albury-Wodonga syndrome, is an annual epidemic of corneal ulceration that occurs almost exclusively in and around the twin cities each summer, which may explain why everyone there looks like Forest Whitaker. Then again, it might be the meth.

From our book Shit Towns of Australia, available in stores and online.

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Shit Holidays: Cathedral Cove

Famous for its picture-perfect natural rock archway nestled between two beaches, New Zealand’s Cathedral Cove is an iconic (i.e. chronically overcrowded) tourist attraction. Much like a real cathedral, the crowds are worst on weekends. And much like a real cathedral, half of the people are sex pests just there for a sneaky perv.

Cathedral Cove can be inconveniently accessed via either a punishing kayak marathon or a punishing hour-long hike. The local council has addressed the overcrowding issue by making it even more difficult to get there by banning car parking in the car park, adding another 20 minutes’ walking or a bus trip to the already epic slog. It would be easier to get to the Sistine Chapel.

Cathedral Cove served as a filming location for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, in which the protagonist children entered the magical world of Narnia through the famous archway. In reality, the most magical thing that can happen to children at the tunnel is magically getting stuck on the wrong side after the tide comes in. The site also featured in a Macklemore music video, in which the woeful white rapper gave a haircut to singer Ray Dalton while wearing a wig to hide his own ‘bad guy from Doug’ operation.

Note: Cathedral Cove in Coromandel is not to be confused with the Cathedral Caves in the Catlins, or the Caved-In Cathedral in Christchurch.

From our new book Shit Towns of New Zealand: The Great Kiwi Tiki Tour, available now.

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Shit Town Power Rankings

1. Penrith, NSW — Youths break into house and stab 14-year-old boy

2. Rockingham, WA — Grub charged after allegedly posting packages of poo to police and government agencies

3. Newcastle, NSW — Drongo fined $10k for going clubbing while infectious with covid, sparking outbreak

4. Yulara, NT — Couple of cops suspended after allegedly taking paddy wagon for drunken joy ride and crashing into stone pillar

5. Brisbane, QLD — Drunk pest hospitalised after allegedly flashing house full of kids and adults before they allegedly chase him down, ram his car and fuck him up

6. Perth, WA — Gronk starts scrub fire by firing flares at cops during car chase, before pushing his car into river

7. Adelaide, SA — Bloke’s drug lair discovered after he sets himself on fire while trying to make cannabis oil; drunk woman roots stranger on public bus on way to AA meeting

8. Mandurah, WA — Gronk caught trespassing to collect marron out of season while drink-driving on suspended licence with drugs in car

9. Dysart, QLD — Gronkess charged after allegedly threatening pub staff, refusing to leave, setting tree on fire

10. Port Pirie, SA — Still shit

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Fan Mail

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Merry Christmas Eye and a crappy new year! Thanks to all our subscribers for spending this shit year with us. We’re sure next year will be just as shit — see you then.