Welcome to another edition of the Shit Towns of Australia newsletter.
This week we take a look at Tasmania, the state on everyone’s lips for all the wrong reasons.
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Shit Town: Launceston
It’s well established that large numbers of Tasmanians are descended from the worst convicts exiled to Australia, so they have a frightening tendency towards cannibalism, incest and being Ricky Ponting. Nowhere are these three crimes against humanity better exemplified than the island state’s secondary city, Launceston.
Launceston is best known as the home town of two of Australia’s most celebrated cricketers: the aforementioned Ponting, a.k.a. Mr Magoo with 1970s Lego-man hair, and human fire hydrant David Boon. Both have represented their town impeccably on the world stage, Boon by once smashing 52 tins on a flight from Sydney to London—a feat which saw him awarded the coveted Australian of the Year Award—and Ponting by being one quarter wombat and famously getting beaten up by a transvestite.
Launceston is home to the world’s longest single span chairlift, which was originally constructed as an escape route from frequent flooding. It was also the site of the first use of anaesthetic in the Southern Hemisphere, which was developed to numb the pain of living in Launceston. The city’s premier attraction is a colony of herpes B–riddled Japanese macaque monkeys that bizarrely live in an enclosure in City Park, making it one of the world’s best places to catch a potentially fatal STI from a monkey. Another tourist drawcard is the Old Umbrella Shop, a rare example of an intact early twentieth-century store, complete with golliwogs in the window. Other than buying racist toys, popular pastimes in Launceston include trying to figure out how to pronounce the city’s name and playing a stupid sport called vigoro, the inbred bastard child of cricket and tennis.
There’s no shame in coming second, unless it’s coming second to Hobart.
From our book Shit Towns of Australia, available in stores and online.
Top 10 Things to Do in Tasmania
Your cousin
Your sister
Your brother
Your other sister
A Tasmanian devil
Your aunt
Your uncle-father
Your mum
A live trout
Visit MONA
Shit Town Power Rankings
Perth, WA — Muppets manage to lose radioactive capsule during transit
Adelaide, SA — 14-year-old boy hospitalised after sticking golf ball up his bumhole
Hobart, TAS — Cressy fish fuckers charged with bestiality and prohibited activities in a cemetery; mad gronk burns down own house while swinging samurai sword
Seymour, VIC — Bomb found in public dunny
Cairns, QLD — Employee sacked after allegedly sharing CCTV footage of woman giving birth in pub
Townsville, QLD — 3.8m croc bashes its way out of wildlife sanctuary; pair of gronks hospitalised after fight at children’s playground
St Helens, TAS — Machete-wielding woman threatens strangers at campsite
Kalgoorlie, WA — Cops chase stolen Red Rooster delivery car through the streets
Bankstown, NSW — 2 mums and their teenage sons brawl in bank
Port Pirie, SA — Still shit
They don't call it Inceston for nothing.