STOA Newsletter #60
Welcome back to the official Shit Towns of Australia newsletter. In this issue, we follow up last week’s Maitland write-up with one for its neighbour Cessnock.
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Shit Town: Cessnock
Sat on the edge of the Hunter Valley (so named because locals hunt visitors) with views to the Brokeback mountains (insert homophobic joke), Cessnock is essentially Newcastle’s Logan, or Maitland’s Maitland. The city’s name is an old Scottish word, ‘cess’ meaning ‘toilet’ and ‘nock’ meaning ‘hole’. Its slogan is ‘Mines, Wines and People’, which is a polite way of saying ‘Air Pollution, Alcoholism and Dickheads’.
With coalmining in decline, Cessnock has been forced to turn to alternative industries such as fish and chips, supplying pingas to Newcastle Knights players, and wine—i.e. churning out goon for other bogan towns. The region’s mine-adjacent vineyards are the perfect place to try some semillon with an aroma of carbon and an aftertaste of cancer. Brimming with bored bogans, bursting with bewildered boomers and surrounded by soot-coated wineries, Cessnock is what would happen if you dumped Morwell in the middle of Tuscany.
Cessnock is also the proud home of a major prison, complete with the country’s first purpose-built maximum-security unit for sex pests. Consequently, ‘Necknock’ is populated by numerous nonces prowling around the Turner Park toilets, as well as a stellar line-up of crackhead car thieves, drunk deadbeat dads with domestic violence convictions, and inbred rednecks wielding homemade weapons. In 1820, approximately 50 per cent of Cessnock’s population were convicts. Two hundred years later, the ratio is about the same.
From our new book Shit Towns of Australia: The Great Aussie Road Trip, out now in stores and online.
Shit Town Power Rankings
Griffith, NSW — Man caught on camera taking a shit on a stranger’s bonnet.
Mt Gambier, SA — Lady gronk convicted of setting fire to bins blames behaviour of bad batch of crack.
Ulverstone, TAS — Nude drunk goes on racist rampage through an Indian restaurant
Geraldton, WA — Gronk arrested for wanking in a shopping centre.
Perth, WA — Drunk gronk drives car into swimming pool.
Darwin, NT — Munter convicted of arson after admitting to throwing Molotov cocktail to his taxi driver.
Sunshine Coast, QLD — Flight attendant accused of threatening to bite man and give him HIV.
Mt Isa, QLD — Baby crocs found in aquatic centre swimming pool
Tamworth, NSW — Local gronk sets Guinness World Record for largest collection of preserved foreskins.
Port Pirie, SA — Still shit
Just brilliant You guys are spot on every time 😂