The Shit Town Showdown Returns
Australia’s favourite shit-townament is back for another year, with a brand new format.
We’ve added more categories including cities and suburbs, to make the competition fairer and to recognise the sheer breadth of Anustralia’s shitness. To accommodate these, each poll will now be a straight vote between all the finalists in that category, rather than last year’s head-to-head knockout system.
The other major change is that due to Facebook removing its poll feature, we will instead be running the polls via this newsletter. If you’ve signed up, you’ll be able to vote directly from your email inbox each time we send out a poll. Each poll will run for one week.
We’re starting next Monday with a poll to determine the Northern Territory’s Shittest Town, which will then progress to the national finals. Check next week’s newsletter to vote, and tell any mates who’d like to vote to sign up at this link: shittownsofaustralia.substack.com/subscribe
To get you amped for the first big vote, we’ve picked a Territory town for this week’s brand new shit town review.
Shit Town: Palmerston
Built in the 1980s to house Darwin’s rejects and saddled with the city’s unwanted old name, Palmerston is the epitome of sloppy seconds. Also known as Darwin’s Dunny, the planned satellite slum is filled with people driven out of Darwin by rising house prices, which makes a nice change from people being driven out of Darwin by people who live in Palmerston. Despite a climate so inhospitable that the air is easier to drink than breathe, Palmerslum is inhabited by numerous dangerous lifeforms including crocs, box jellyfish and gangs of grog-guzzling gronks.
Palmerstonians are a people of habit, engaging in several regular traditions. On ‘Thirsty Thursdays’, they celebrate dole day by redistributing their payments to the local bottle-O. On Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, they patiently wait outside the police station for their loved ones to be released from the drunk tank. Once a week, Palmerstoners cut another couple of inches off their neighbour’s hose to make a new bottle bong. And every night they hold fun family events which normally involve drink-driving their unmuffled shitboxes to brand new housing developments, where they decorate the freshly laid roads with vast murals of skid marks. Other popular Palmerston pastimes include punching grey nomads, pissing on passed-out long grassers, and tipping disabled people out of their wheelchairs to pinch their goon bags.
Shit Town Power Rankings
Parramatta, NSW - Train passenger randomly stabbed at station
Cairns, QLD - Mad gronk stabs cop
Alice Springs, NT - Feral woman bites cop
Wodonga, VIC - Members of micropenis support group Proud Boys filmed threatening online critics; cop cameras catch hoon doing skids outside police station
Ararat, VIC - Pest accused of having a tug while queuing in KFC
Hinchinbrook Island, QLD - 10kg of cocaine washes up on beach
Geelong, VIC - Gronks leave trail of destruction in stolen road surfacing machine
Townsville, QLD - Stolen car crashes through resident’s front gate
Cloncurry, QLD - Town chosen to host new season of Survivor due to being uninhabitable shithole
Port Pirie, SA - Still shit
Fan Mail: Emerald
If you’d like to buy Rodney’s favourite book Shit Towns of Australia, you can find it in stores or online.