Welcome once again to the official Shit Towns of Australia newsletter.
In this issue, we’re excited to begin the Shit Town Showdown competition for another year — we can’t wait to find out Australia’s shittest town, suburb, city and state for 2021. We’re sure everyone is just as excited as we are!
This week’s category is the Northern Territory’s Shittest Town. Will Tennant Creek retain the Territory title, or will we squeeze out a new champion? Scroll to the bottom of this email to vote!
If you have mates who are keen to vote in future polls, get them to subscribe at this link: shittownsofaustralia.substack.com/subscribe
Shit Town: Goodna
This review has been stolen.
Throwback: Darwin
Darwin is the only city in the world with more crocodiles than human beings. It’s also the only major Australian city to be levelled by the Japanese during World War II and completely destroyed by cyclones on three separate occasions, from which it has never fully recovered. The federal government maintains Darwin as a live-action replica of what could be expected to happen to an Australian city in a nuclear apocalypse.
Popular hobbies in the Northern Territory’s ramshackle capital include alcoholism, arguing over who would win a fight between a salty and a great white, and pointing out the inaccuracies in Wolf Creek. The city’s premier event is the annual Beer Can Regatta, in which contestants race boats made entirely out of empty booze tins whilst emptying several more, and NT Cracker Day, when resident youth take time out from holding up servos with kitchen knives to engage in a spot of casual arson and drive-by firework shooting. The local agenda-setter is the NT News, a bastion of quality journalism responsible for such headlines as ‘Horny ghost haunts house’, ‘Sexy granny drought’ and ‘Why I stuck a cracker up my clacker’.
Darwin markets itself as the ‘Gateway to the Outback’, despite the fact that the same slogan is claimed by every desert shithole in Australia. Darwin is also the ‘Gateway to Asia’, a much stronger selling point as the idea of fleeing to another continent is particularly appealing when you’re in Darwin. In fact, Darwin’s most popular slogan is ‘Gateway to Anywhere That Isn’t Fucking Darwin’.
From our book Shit Towns of Australia, available in stores and online.
Shit Town Power Rankings
Perth, WA - Fuckwit with swastika painted on forehead attacks Aboriginal women with makeshift flamethrower; Macca’s goes up in flames
Alice Springs, NT - Car torched in supermarket car park; 87-year-old woman and 79-year-old man violently mugged by feral kids in separate attacks
Palmerston, NT - Heavily pregnant woman and 13-year-old boy both busted drink-driving
Port Pirie, SA - Toddlers’ lead levels hit 10-year high after smelter breaches EPA licence
Dubbo, NSW - 20 gronks brawl with cricket bats and smash up car after alleged ramming attempt
Adelaide, SA - Drunk hoon has car impounded after doing burnouts in car park directly above police station
Darwin, NT - Elderly woman arrested after allegedly threatening kids with rifle
Echuca, VIC - Naked man arrested after two-hour rooftop standoff
Albury, NSW - Junkie terrorises retirement home residents and steals birthday cake
Cloncurry, QLD - Still shit
Fan Mail: Palmerston/Cloncurry
A Karen, a Kathleen and a Cloncurry Council.
Vote: NT’s Shittest Town
Click/tap on a town’s name below to vote.
Notes: Voting closes and winner announced Monday 8/3. Only your first vote is recorded, so don’t fuck it up. For the purposes of this competition, a ‘town’ is defined as a settlement with a population of between 1000 and 100,000 — so Elliott is too small and Darwin is too big. Instead, Darwin gets a free pass directly to the national finals in the Shitty City category, coming later this year.
What is the Northern Territory’s Shittest Town?
After living in the N.T. for many years, the crime rate is higher than some of the mainstream urban areas in cities. I was a witness to an attempted murder and it made me leave and even though family is there, I refuse to go back. Youth numbers are astronomical and the ones forced to leave their communities for bad habits that the communities will not allow to stay, leave and go to the closest town to support habits. Hard to live in a state like that.