STOA Newsletter #59
Welcome back to the official Shit Towns of Australia newsletter. This week we review Maitland, especially for all the steamers headed to the Hunter Valley Steamfest.
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Shit Town: Maitland
Maitland spruiks itself as the ‘first town of the Hunter Valley’, a claim vigorously contested by Newcastle, which is a bit like two hobos fighting over a shit sandwich. The city was founded by notorious petty criminal and bigamist Molly Morgan, who was exiled to New South Wales before escaping and being sent back for another crime. While Newcastle was a favourite dumping ground for Britain’s undesirables, Maitland was where Newcastle sent theirs, making it basically a convict colony convict colony. The settlement was built on the banks of the massively flood-prone Hunter River and has sprawled over the top of old coalmines, so is an ideal place to live if you enjoy choking on coaldust, falling into abandoned mine shafts or drowning in your living room.
Maitland’s premier event is the annual Hunter Valley Steamfest, which famously features a race between a steam train and a biplane. The biplane almost always wins, but only because the train is invariably relieved of its wheels by locals and left resting on cinder blocks before it can reach the finish line. The city’s rugby league team is the Pickers, named for the local tradition of digging sooty boogers out of their snouts mid-match and smearing them on opponents’ jerseys.
For sightseers, Maitland is home to an unparalleled array of shit monuments. The ‘Black Boy’ is a fibreglass replica of an American ‘lawn jockey’, a racist relic proudly displayed on the main street. ‘Fetch Boy’ is a statue of a human-dog hybrid picking up its own turd having just taken a shit in public, a pointed critique of Maitlanders’ hygiene habits. Appropriately, the bogan-infested city also hosts the Big Ugg Boots, a supersized shrine to Australia’s favourite sheepskin skank shoes (most of which are actually made in China from rat hides and political prisoners’ pubes).
Maitland: first in the Hunter Valley … for floods, subsidence and casual racism.
From our new book Shit Towns of Australia: The Great Aussie Road Trip, out now in stores and online.
Shit Town Power Rankings
Geraldton, WA — Authorities ban goon sacks because Gero deros can’t handle their piss.
Bundaberg, QLD— Patient punches paramedic, steals ambulance.
Mildura, VIC — Two gronks arrested following brawl in Bunnings.
Tara, QLD — Fleeing gronk flings faeces at police.
Tingha, NSW — Shoplifter receives lifetime ban from Bunnings.
Kingaroy, QLD — Police launch manhunt after flasher exposes himself to children at Maccas.
Menai, NSW — Bus driver charged with letting a 16 year old drive a bus load of children.
Orange, NSW — Man arrested for throwing kebab at cop.
Gold Coast, QLD — Family finds venomous snake in antique radio.
Port Pirie, SA — Still shit
what about exposing shit sydney suburbs such as chatswood