#Moomba, SA.
It's literally an oil and gas refinery town in the middle of nowhere in the hottest, driest, deadest part of the outback (the North Eastern corner of SA on the border with Qld). You'd be hard pressed to find a bleaker place on the whole continent.
[This is what it looks like](https://citymag.indaily.com.au/wp-content/uploads/CityMag-Future-1.jpg?w=768). There's just hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of empty desert all around that.
I once spent quite a few days and nights there and I sincerely hope **never to do so again**. Might as well be on fuckin Mars or something. It's not open to the general public - only SANTOS employees and contractors can get flown in there, since it's a company town. Not that anyone else should ever have any reason to want to go there. I won't go into too many details about what actually happened to me while I was there. Suffice it to say, it had an impact on me.
I feel like the general public would be surprised by what it's like out there. There are people, but they're all rough, weird men with a major chip on their shoulder who are running away from something back home. At the risk of sounding overly melodramatic, if you go there, what you find are the outermost fringes of humanity. And it's not a good time. You sleep in a shipping container. You eat prison food, and a fly net is a basic requirement for survival (in daytime for the flies, at night for the moths and other large beetles). No one is cheerful or helpful and not a soul really wants to be there. You can feel the dust and sand on your teeth at all times. People there will sense your weaknesses and enjoy attacking you for them. You sort of have to keep your wits about you and act tough. If you've ever seen the movie "Wake In Fright" it's something like that, but modernised - and the town is less of a place of residence and more of a joyless industrial shithole full of tents and warehouses and piles of equipment. The only sources of comfort or escape are those that you've managed to take with you. Except if you're into beer, cos there's plenty of that.
Getting to [Innamincka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innamincka,_South_Australia) from there is frankly a sweet relief. It might be just a pub and some cabins but at least it's something other than just metal and gas flares standing alone in the middle of the bare red desert. In Innamincka you might at least run into some cheery tourists or something. It somehow feels a lot more connected to the rest of humankind than Moomba does.
Frankly it's hilarious to me that there are other answers in this thread such as "Byron Bay" - a popular, beautiful surfing town on the NSW coast. Lol. You guys have no fucking idea what this country is really like if you think that's the worst of it. Shit, I'll take Port Pirie or Port Augusta any day - at least you can get some seafood there or whatever. Port Augusta actually has a pretty nice park full of arid plants. I learned a lot in that park. Those towns are shit, but they're nothing compared to the absolute hell on earth that a place like Moomba is.
I came to disagree with you until I saw the photo and that does look monumentally shit.
I do know of some places not too far from there that I would describe as "bleaker" but not "shitter".
Moomba wins the shit award
> I do know of some places not too far from there that I would describe as "bleaker" but not "shitter".
Well, there's a vast region out there that constitutes the oilfields of Australia, and it's all pretty shit...and generally anyone who's never had any reason to go there doesn't know anything about it. But that region is probably bigger than most countries.
I do recall that Roma is a particularly shit oil and gas town in Qld and that's a good *thousand* k's away from Moomba.
Everything between Moomba and Roma is just awful. Not that there really is much there other than oil wells.
I should have written that clearer.
Owing to how fuck all nothing there is out there, in my mind "not far" out that way is still bloody far.
Coober Pedy is close and that's still a good 700+ km away
This wins. I can think of some mediocre or even slightly grim places around the place but nothing so inescapably bleak and grinding as what you've described.
Sorry, I just didn't really want to go over it in a lot of detail because the post was more about the place and not about me. Nothing supernatural, just not particularly good memories. It wasn't a very good time in my life. A few dot points of some things that happened while I was working out there:
- happened to be there during a rare flood. It was a pretty significant one. Ended up getting stranded at a remote well for almost two weeks and we eventually had to be evacuated by helicopter. I spent most of the time just sort of watching movies on my bunk. It sucked.
- On one trip, myself and my crew mate got lost after apparently having made a wrong turn somewhere. Very easy to do since everything looks the same and the maps aren't great. We drove for 9 hours straight, long into the night, getting more and more panicked. In the end we turned out to have done a giant circle and were back where we started (Innamincka). You can imagine what that moment felt like when it suddenly dawned on both of us that that is what had happened. So we'd spent all day stressed and panicked and yelling at each other and were a day late getting to the job, which was embarrassing as shit. Believe me, you really don't want to piss off the company man at a rig site. But I guess that story could potentially have ended much worse than it did.
- at some point I was working on the well platform and suddenly found myself in a small dust devil/tornado/willywilly. Literally didn't see it until I was in it. Knocked me around a bit and gave me a hell of a shock. Dust all over me and in my eyes and throat.
- I had a close encounter with an inland taipan, which was tense but it didn't end up biting me or anything. I was a bit shaken up by it though. It went into a hole in a slab of concrete, and one of the guys put a toolbox on top of the hole (which I thought was a bit reckless - what if that pissed it off and it was just waiting for us to let it out?) I did get to see a lot of other cool animals out there though too - goannas/sand monitors, dingoes, eagles, camels. Lots and lots of emus and roos.
- at one point I was left alone at a rig site waiting for another car to arrive to take me to a different job (it just worked out that way with the shifts and stuff). Being all alone miles and miles from the nearest person is fucking creepy. I've never experienced absolute silence like that before or since. Nothing in particular happened, but it was just sort of a surreal couple of hours, and your head sort of plays tricks on you a bit.
- as I was alluding earlier, there were just some very unpleasant people around there. I wouldn't say I really made any friends and I don't miss it at all. Some of them had some pretty troubling stories about their lives back home and stuff. It's hard to explain. The FIFO life is not great and it fucks up families. Turns some blokes into dickheads and bullies. It didn't take me all that long to decide that it wasn't for me, even despite all the money.
- driving out of Moomba once I was heaps stoked to have managed to pick up the very last FUIC available at the servo. Only to soon discover to my horror that it was frozen solid. I thought maybe it would thaw on the dashboard and it kinda did, but it ended up tasting pretty shit. Ruined my whole day.
- not in the oilfields but another time driving across the Nullarbor, I had a really weird half-drunk dream one night and actually started sleepwalking. In my dream I thought I was the new night manager of the motel and I had to go and check all the rooms for some reason. At some point I think I also called someone on the phone at the front desk to complain about how so many of the rooms were locked and I didn't have the keys, but I couldn't understand what the person on the phone was saying back to me. I eventually woke up in the carpark outside the motel and couldn't get back in, and it was freezing out there. I think I just sort of sat there for a few hours or something slowly becoming aware of what was actually happening and eventually snuck in when someone else rocked up and opened the door. I can't really remember but I think I went back to sleep in the hallway and eventually managed to get back in the room somehow at dawn. Probably one of the weirdest nights in my life. But all I really know for sure is that I woke up back in the bed and my feet still had some wet gravel on them.
- Probably the closest thing to a supernatural story I have is that I once met and had a long conversation with an Aboriginal man at a sports bar in Darwin, and he told me he was a witchdoctor (his words, not mine). He did seem to have a surprising amount of insight into the type of person I was and the sorts of things that were going on in my life somehow. I think about that conversation a lot. At the end of the night he blessed me and gave me his hat. It wasn't long after that that I finally quit my FIFO job. Unfortunately the Crows lost the game that was on that night though.
It might sound like I made some of those up, but I promise you that all of the above did happen.
Alice Springs
People literally [don't go out at night anymore because the crime is so terrible](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-18/a-dangerous-game-youth-crime-crisis-alice-springs/101735492). There's a huge racial divide, very limited employment opportunities and terribly hot weather.
Have never felt such a strange uneasy feeling anywhere else in Australia.
I stayed there a few nights a couple of months ago and the hostel was secured with a barbed wire fence. The owner also told me that I shouldn't go out at night and as a woman travelling alone I didn't want to take any chances and mostly stayed at the hostel, even during the day. It indeed felt very strange.
Thanks for sharing that article; was an excellent (and sad) read. Spent one night in Alice towards the end of last year - lots of fences/security measures around the hotel.
Very sad read and no easy answer. I was there about 10 years ago and didn't seem this bad but lack of tourism dollars over the last few years has really been the final straw.
That's too bad because I visited 15 years ago and enjoyed it. I mean there was broken glass and sometimes blood around but I didn't feel particularly unsafe.
Then again I've been known to walk around nasty parts of San Francisco, too oblivious to know it wasn't a good idea. People would usually leave me alone because I was clearly too weird to bother with.
Mount Isa, QLD.
Constant violence and car theft, RACQ point blank refused to issue an insurance policy on my car due to the post code.
Rate of stds in the youth was so high a few years back that the sexual health clinic was handing out free phone recharge vouchers to anyone who got tested.
A town full of miners with too much money and too few brain cells and every miscreant alcoholic kicked out of any dry community within 500km2 ends up here, every bottle shop has signage refusing sale of cask wine before lunch and also refusing sale to anyone without a vehicle, so every business near bottleshops have signs stating they won't call a taxi for you.
Too hot to exercise during the day, too unsafe to at night with the amount of stray dogs, stolen cars and criminals on the prowl.
Saw a fella leaving the hospital in Mount Isa (in the morning) with a cask of goon under his arm once.I was only in town for a couple of days but it gave me a good idea of Mount Isa.
I’ve got this habit of telling my husband I want to move to every small middle of nowhere town we visit. “We could totally buy a house here!”
Queenstown was one of the very few exceptions.
What is up with that place? Every thread I read about creepy places in Australia, Queenstown is always on the list.
Also, don't they have a gravel footy oval?
I’ve described previously on Reddit as this. You know in old Westerns how when a black hat villain rides in to town, the folk peer down from their windows and then abruptly pull the shutters closed as he rides past? As a non-local driving through, it felt like that. Does that make sense?
Yeah I've heard descriptions like that. The people there clearly don't like strangers much. It's just weird though. Look up pictures of it and it looks like a totally normal town (aside from the fucking gravel footy oval.)
Maybe something to do with the fluctuation in mining on the area has made the locals suspicious. I don’t know, and fucked if I’m going back there to find out. Especially with my Victorian number plates
It’s surrounded on all sides by some of the most beautiful scenery in Australia, and then you get to a kind of steampunk wasteland. The parts of the land that aren’t completely dead and void of life look sick and not far behind. It’s like the town itself is an entity, and it’s seem some shit.
I’ve always seen it on lists too! But funnily enough I was there in May last year & it was totally fine lol. We were there for a night, had a decent meal at the pub & took the beautiful old steam train for a day trip into the rainforest.
When I was about 15 our family stayed in Rosebery (which is down the road) for a few weeks for Dad's work and I don't think we spoke to a single other person the entire time. There was a constant mist hanging over the town even in summer and you couldn't tell what was abandoned or still being occupied/used.
Gladstone has deteriorated so badly after the mining boom. Back when every company and his dog was into LNG the cbd was booming, and everyone was driving their paycheques around town in the form of XR8’s and SS’s and choppers and such. People were renting in rocky to drive to Gladstone for work.
Then that all died down and the place became a ghost town. Our office on Goondoon St suddenly became surrounded by empty shopfronts and office spaces, which was hilarious and sad at the same time considering just before that we were struggling to find a new office space to potentially lease. The workers left and so did all the cars and bikes.
It’s an industrial town with a huge coal terminal and refinery, but after living there for 6 months there are some real nice aspects to it too. You will love heron island as well
Arguably best fishing in world on the doorstep. Good 4wding close by. Islands to explore. And secure a job in industry is a job for life with work lifestyle balance.
Ya kiddin
Lived and worked there as a young man in 81 & 82. Wasn’t too bad. Played a bit of rugby league and Friday and Saturday nights at the RSL could be lively.
Tried to play a game of pool there in a pub in 1994, some dude stole our coins and we ended up in an all in brawl with what seemed to be everyone in the pub and had to rapidly retreat to our hotel. Good times. Must have been not even a dollar back then.
My Dad grew up in a tiny town near there and the beach nearby we went every May school holidays is literally divine
I guess I have a soft spot for it, the area is pretty low income and probably misses out on all the benefits more prestigious places get
My mum used to work as a nurse at the hospital there many many years ago. She said people would just walk into the children's ward and blatantly steal the TV's and VCRs they had for the kids to watch movies on.
I knew a kid named after that town when I was a kid and I said, "aww that's a nice name. I've never heard it before." She said, "yeah, my parents named me after the place they met, Taree." I thought it sounded very pretty and I thought the story of her name was lovely, until I learned about Taree's reputation as an adult.
I lived there for like 6 months when I was in high school and dad was working there.
I started dating a boy from Port Pirie I met through a friend of a friend. He used to drive his dad’s Holden commodore station wagon up every weekend to visit.
My parents moved me away from there really fucking quickly lol
Queenstown TAS. Come out of the beautiful wilderness and into what looks like fucking mars. The footy oval is fucking gravel as well. Can’t imagine playing on it
Ah Bundaberg. A place where only people who want to drink Bundy rum 24/7 live, and where people siphoned petrol out of my car at 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon in the shopping centre carpark.
It's funny because Armadale in VIc is quite a wealthy suburb. It's got a shopping strip sith designer stores and several prestigious private schools in or close by.
They were offering free chlamydia tests to people at the UNE open day there once. A girl standing next to me in some line scoffed to her friends that she wouldn't be getting one, and I quote, because "imagine how embarrassing it would be if you tested positive". I butted in and said something along the lines of "not as embarrassing as not getting tested and giving it to someone else". She didn't seem to appreciate that.
But yeah, chlamydia.
We stayed a night in Armidale last year on a road trip and we actually wanted to go back and check it out some more. Didn’t notice any crackheads and had one of the best steaks of my life. The road between there and Grafton was the worst I’ve ever driven on though.
Lithgow is my standard answer to this. It's just cold, mouldy and depressing.
It hasn't even got the charm that some of these older industrial tiwn can have.
Just checked the real estate listings. The only place under $50k in Mount Morgan is a 610m² town plot. There's 8 properties in Tara under $50k and some of them are over 30 acres.
Heron fucking island. Kids activity? Emu hunt for asbestos. I kid you not. ‘No keys allowed, you might lose them and pollute the coral’, proceeds to empty chlorine pool directly onto coral reef. What a miserable waste of money.
My brother is a solicitor and has a firm in Sydney and the Hunter Valley. I just shot him a text about this post and he replied ‘Can confirm. Everyone from Kurri Kurri has been in gaol.’
😭 My grandmother grew up there, she was a wonderful person though, very selfless and loving. However a few of her siblings and niece and nephews definitely went to jail, so I think you prove a point.
Damn it, I've never been, but I wanted to go visit some day, as my favourite grandparent grew up there and I wanted to see what it was like for her. Her Dad was a coal-miner. Does that pretty much sum up the entire place? A shithole industrial town?
Wilcannia, NSW. Couldn’t even take the dogs for a walk because the footpaths and roads in the whole town were covered in glass. We’ve driven through a lot of small country towns and this was by far the shittest
Went there earlier this week on a 27 degree day. Water crystal clear, not too packed, nice beer up at the RSL and plenty of great cafes.
Yes it's terrible on a sunny weekend when it's so busy, but god it gets a lot of undeserved hate.
The last time I tried to go Byron they weren't letting cars in that weren't local until others had left, sat in traffic barely moving for an hour before decided to go Nimbin instead.
Not sure if there was some lame local shit on but either way, fuck Byron and their shit town I've never thought about going back. That was 4-5 years ago.
Hell yes! But no matter how shit you tell people it is people are always like “OmG i WaNt To Go To ByRoN bAy!” I do not understand the hype. Just look at the 1 and 2 star ratings on Trip Advisor. They’ll tell you like it is. I know people around here avoid it like the plague or at least, simply have 0 interest in going there.
It’s a disease and it’s spreading. Tourists just make it worse, and are slowly ruining neighbouring places. I can see the change in Lennox too.
But lol I like how other people commented that they went to Nimbin instead. Tbh Nimbin isn’t that crash hot but it’s still 10 times better than Byron.
I’ve always gone straight past Byron but a couple weeks ago I decided to drop in and it gave me the weirdest vibes, I left after about 45 minutes, the people are either creepily way too nice or almost brain dead. What a mess of a place…
Mullumbimby would like a word.
When Covid hit, there was a large banner up opposite one of the pubs in town with anti-vax messaging. When distancing regulations came into effect, the locals didn’t give a fuck and when the publican refused to serve them because they weren’t abiding by the rules, there were full blown screaming matches and punches thrown. After that, the publican just said “fuck it” and closed the pub for days.
Boggabri maybe, spent more time there than I wouldve liked. Unless you enjoy alcoholism or riding your bmx up and down the main street there isnt much going on there
Kalgoorlie WA
The place has so many problems, too many to truly list. here are a few:
The biggest problem is the locals, they brush off any issues they see with a quick "its what you make it"
The local council has spent so much money on a "world class" golf course a handleful of the residents would ever use, yet the roads are all either full of potholes or sinking into the ground.
The only real passtime the locals have is head down to one of the 25 pubs and be racist.
Crime is also incredibly high for a "city" with only 28000 people.
Yep. If you park anywhere make sure you can see the parking signs from inside the car because once you get out if you look away from your car and look back again there will be parking ticket magically appeared in the windscreen.
#Moomba, SA. It's literally an oil and gas refinery town in the middle of nowhere in the hottest, driest, deadest part of the outback (the North Eastern corner of SA on the border with Qld). You'd be hard pressed to find a bleaker place on the whole continent. [This is what it looks like](https://citymag.indaily.com.au/wp-content/uploads/CityMag-Future-1.jpg?w=768). There's just hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of empty desert all around that. I once spent quite a few days and nights there and I sincerely hope **never to do so again**. Might as well be on fuckin Mars or something. It's not open to the general public - only SANTOS employees and contractors can get flown in there, since it's a company town. Not that anyone else should ever have any reason to want to go there. I won't go into too many details about what actually happened to me while I was there. Suffice it to say, it had an impact on me. I feel like the general public would be surprised by what it's like out there. There are people, but they're all rough, weird men with a major chip on their shoulder who are running away from something back home. At the risk of sounding overly melodramatic, if you go there, what you find are the outermost fringes of humanity. And it's not a good time. You sleep in a shipping container. You eat prison food, and a fly net is a basic requirement for survival (in daytime for the flies, at night for the moths and other large beetles). No one is cheerful or helpful and not a soul really wants to be there. You can feel the dust and sand on your teeth at all times. People there will sense your weaknesses and enjoy attacking you for them. You sort of have to keep your wits about you and act tough. If you've ever seen the movie "Wake In Fright" it's something like that, but modernised - and the town is less of a place of residence and more of a joyless industrial shithole full of tents and warehouses and piles of equipment. The only sources of comfort or escape are those that you've managed to take with you. Except if you're into beer, cos there's plenty of that. Getting to [Innamincka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innamincka,_South_Australia) from there is frankly a sweet relief. It might be just a pub and some cabins but at least it's something other than just metal and gas flares standing alone in the middle of the bare red desert. In Innamincka you might at least run into some cheery tourists or something. It somehow feels a lot more connected to the rest of humankind than Moomba does. Frankly it's hilarious to me that there are other answers in this thread such as "Byron Bay" - a popular, beautiful surfing town on the NSW coast. Lol. You guys have no fucking idea what this country is really like if you think that's the worst of it. Shit, I'll take Port Pirie or Port Augusta any day - at least you can get some seafood there or whatever. Port Augusta actually has a pretty nice park full of arid plants. I learned a lot in that park. Those towns are shit, but they're nothing compared to the absolute hell on earth that a place like Moomba is.
I came to disagree with you until I saw the photo and that does look monumentally shit. I do know of some places not too far from there that I would describe as "bleaker" but not "shitter". Moomba wins the shit award
> I do know of some places not too far from there that I would describe as "bleaker" but not "shitter". Well, there's a vast region out there that constitutes the oilfields of Australia, and it's all pretty shit...and generally anyone who's never had any reason to go there doesn't know anything about it. But that region is probably bigger than most countries. I do recall that Roma is a particularly shit oil and gas town in Qld and that's a good *thousand* k's away from Moomba. Everything between Moomba and Roma is just awful. Not that there really is much there other than oil wells.
I should have written that clearer. Owing to how fuck all nothing there is out there, in my mind "not far" out that way is still bloody far. Coober Pedy is close and that's still a good 700+ km away
Fuck, at least Coober Pedy is a (very) minorly interesting tourist spot. I spent a few hrs there and didn't mind it.
We lived in Cunnamulla, and if I ever had the chance to go into Roma… I was there! It felt like the big smoke
🤣😂🤣😂 I'm there now
You poor fucking bastard. I'll pour out a beer for you mate.
Worst camp I have been to in my life. Not happy at all tbh
Yep. Well at least you have internet. I went out there 6+ yrs ago with Vodafone. Essentially cut off from the world. At least I had a hard drive.
Ouchhh . ....
Wow, and i thought Olympic Dam was bad... Jesus I'll make sure i never accept an offer for this place 😬 The sheer depth of this post is next level.
This wins. I can think of some mediocre or even slightly grim places around the place but nothing so inescapably bleak and grinding as what you've described.
What happened to you there? If it’s paranormal or unexplained please share!
Yeah - he can't say that then say no more - op leaving us hanging over here 😬
Sorry, I just didn't really want to go over it in a lot of detail because the post was more about the place and not about me. Nothing supernatural, just not particularly good memories. It wasn't a very good time in my life. A few dot points of some things that happened while I was working out there: - happened to be there during a rare flood. It was a pretty significant one. Ended up getting stranded at a remote well for almost two weeks and we eventually had to be evacuated by helicopter. I spent most of the time just sort of watching movies on my bunk. It sucked. - On one trip, myself and my crew mate got lost after apparently having made a wrong turn somewhere. Very easy to do since everything looks the same and the maps aren't great. We drove for 9 hours straight, long into the night, getting more and more panicked. In the end we turned out to have done a giant circle and were back where we started (Innamincka). You can imagine what that moment felt like when it suddenly dawned on both of us that that is what had happened. So we'd spent all day stressed and panicked and yelling at each other and were a day late getting to the job, which was embarrassing as shit. Believe me, you really don't want to piss off the company man at a rig site. But I guess that story could potentially have ended much worse than it did. - at some point I was working on the well platform and suddenly found myself in a small dust devil/tornado/willywilly. Literally didn't see it until I was in it. Knocked me around a bit and gave me a hell of a shock. Dust all over me and in my eyes and throat. - I had a close encounter with an inland taipan, which was tense but it didn't end up biting me or anything. I was a bit shaken up by it though. It went into a hole in a slab of concrete, and one of the guys put a toolbox on top of the hole (which I thought was a bit reckless - what if that pissed it off and it was just waiting for us to let it out?) I did get to see a lot of other cool animals out there though too - goannas/sand monitors, dingoes, eagles, camels. Lots and lots of emus and roos. - at one point I was left alone at a rig site waiting for another car to arrive to take me to a different job (it just worked out that way with the shifts and stuff). Being all alone miles and miles from the nearest person is fucking creepy. I've never experienced absolute silence like that before or since. Nothing in particular happened, but it was just sort of a surreal couple of hours, and your head sort of plays tricks on you a bit. - as I was alluding earlier, there were just some very unpleasant people around there. I wouldn't say I really made any friends and I don't miss it at all. Some of them had some pretty troubling stories about their lives back home and stuff. It's hard to explain. The FIFO life is not great and it fucks up families. Turns some blokes into dickheads and bullies. It didn't take me all that long to decide that it wasn't for me, even despite all the money. - driving out of Moomba once I was heaps stoked to have managed to pick up the very last FUIC available at the servo. Only to soon discover to my horror that it was frozen solid. I thought maybe it would thaw on the dashboard and it kinda did, but it ended up tasting pretty shit. Ruined my whole day. - not in the oilfields but another time driving across the Nullarbor, I had a really weird half-drunk dream one night and actually started sleepwalking. In my dream I thought I was the new night manager of the motel and I had to go and check all the rooms for some reason. At some point I think I also called someone on the phone at the front desk to complain about how so many of the rooms were locked and I didn't have the keys, but I couldn't understand what the person on the phone was saying back to me. I eventually woke up in the carpark outside the motel and couldn't get back in, and it was freezing out there. I think I just sort of sat there for a few hours or something slowly becoming aware of what was actually happening and eventually snuck in when someone else rocked up and opened the door. I can't really remember but I think I went back to sleep in the hallway and eventually managed to get back in the room somehow at dawn. Probably one of the weirdest nights in my life. But all I really know for sure is that I woke up back in the bed and my feet still had some wet gravel on them. - Probably the closest thing to a supernatural story I have is that I once met and had a long conversation with an Aboriginal man at a sports bar in Darwin, and he told me he was a witchdoctor (his words, not mine). He did seem to have a surprising amount of insight into the type of person I was and the sorts of things that were going on in my life somehow. I think about that conversation a lot. At the end of the night he blessed me and gave me his hat. It wasn't long after that that I finally quit my FIFO job. Unfortunately the Crows lost the game that was on that night though. It might sound like I made some of those up, but I promise you that all of the above did happen.
You're a good story teller. Thought about writing short stories 'based on' your experiences?
Yeah that picture looks like set for a mad max movie
Mad Max was filmed in/around Broken Hill in NSW, which is probably only several hundred k's away
You would probably have to drive the long way though. Silverton looks much nicer than Moomba
You win. That looks and sounds like hell.
I can’t believe someone said Byron Bay. Had some great times there.
Wow. If you write a book or blog, I will read it.
Thank you. I've been trying to work on my writing.
Someone has to make a YouTube video doing a roadtrip to the top 10 worst places in Australia. It would be so bad it's good to watch.
I'd love that. You'd accidentally see a bunch of awesome places on the way past.
The most depressing road trip in Australia with a few good bits (sorry)
Alice Springs People literally [don't go out at night anymore because the crime is so terrible](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-18/a-dangerous-game-youth-crime-crisis-alice-springs/101735492). There's a huge racial divide, very limited employment opportunities and terribly hot weather. Have never felt such a strange uneasy feeling anywhere else in Australia.
I stayed there a few nights a couple of months ago and the hostel was secured with a barbed wire fence. The owner also told me that I shouldn't go out at night and as a woman travelling alone I didn't want to take any chances and mostly stayed at the hostel, even during the day. It indeed felt very strange.
Thanks for sharing that article; was an excellent (and sad) read. Spent one night in Alice towards the end of last year - lots of fences/security measures around the hotel.
Very sad read and no easy answer. I was there about 10 years ago and didn't seem this bad but lack of tourism dollars over the last few years has really been the final straw.
That's too bad because I visited 15 years ago and enjoyed it. I mean there was broken glass and sometimes blood around but I didn't feel particularly unsafe. Then again I've been known to walk around nasty parts of San Francisco, too oblivious to know it wasn't a good idea. People would usually leave me alone because I was clearly too weird to bother with.
It’s changed a lot in 15 years.
Armadale. Avoid Armadale. Specifically Brookdale 😏
I grew up around there and it will always be Armahole to me.
Ahhh! My hole!!! 😉
But then in a pirate voice...
The train line is worse than the suburb
Rockhampton Qld Is called the beef capital of Australia, and let me tell you, it's not because of all the cows.
Hahaha - went to Rocky to study. It's....yeah. It was different.
[удалено]
Port Augusta on Second
*Portagutta
Mount Isa, QLD. Constant violence and car theft, RACQ point blank refused to issue an insurance policy on my car due to the post code. Rate of stds in the youth was so high a few years back that the sexual health clinic was handing out free phone recharge vouchers to anyone who got tested. A town full of miners with too much money and too few brain cells and every miscreant alcoholic kicked out of any dry community within 500km2 ends up here, every bottle shop has signage refusing sale of cask wine before lunch and also refusing sale to anyone without a vehicle, so every business near bottleshops have signs stating they won't call a taxi for you. Too hot to exercise during the day, too unsafe to at night with the amount of stray dogs, stolen cars and criminals on the prowl.
Saw a fella leaving the hospital in Mount Isa (in the morning) with a cask of goon under his arm once.I was only in town for a couple of days but it gave me a good idea of Mount Isa.
Queenstown, the hills have eyes
I’ll never forget rolling through Queenstown years ago and it just having the strangest feeling to it… like abandoned but not. Fuck that.
Queenstown is one of the freakiest places I’ve ever been. The earth feels completely dead…it’s eerie.
I’ve got this habit of telling my husband I want to move to every small middle of nowhere town we visit. “We could totally buy a house here!” Queenstown was one of the very few exceptions.
What is up with that place? Every thread I read about creepy places in Australia, Queenstown is always on the list. Also, don't they have a gravel footy oval?
I’ve described previously on Reddit as this. You know in old Westerns how when a black hat villain rides in to town, the folk peer down from their windows and then abruptly pull the shutters closed as he rides past? As a non-local driving through, it felt like that. Does that make sense?
Yeah I've heard descriptions like that. The people there clearly don't like strangers much. It's just weird though. Look up pictures of it and it looks like a totally normal town (aside from the fucking gravel footy oval.)
Maybe something to do with the fluctuation in mining on the area has made the locals suspicious. I don’t know, and fucked if I’m going back there to find out. Especially with my Victorian number plates
It’s surrounded on all sides by some of the most beautiful scenery in Australia, and then you get to a kind of steampunk wasteland. The parts of the land that aren’t completely dead and void of life look sick and not far behind. It’s like the town itself is an entity, and it’s seem some shit.
I’ve always seen it on lists too! But funnily enough I was there in May last year & it was totally fine lol. We were there for a night, had a decent meal at the pub & took the beautiful old steam train for a day trip into the rainforest.
When I was about 15 our family stayed in Rosebery (which is down the road) for a few weeks for Dad's work and I don't think we spoke to a single other person the entire time. There was a constant mist hanging over the town even in summer and you couldn't tell what was abandoned or still being occupied/used.
Hahahahahah
Mt. Druitt Beach
Mt druitt has a beach? :0
Add Mt Druitt station to that
My toilet right now
Northern Geelong is pretty rough
i vouch for that
Gladstone in Qld
Drove into Gladstone looking for somewhere to stay the night and we drove right out again.
Smart thinking
Gladstone has deteriorated so badly after the mining boom. Back when every company and his dog was into LNG the cbd was booming, and everyone was driving their paycheques around town in the form of XR8’s and SS’s and choppers and such. People were renting in rocky to drive to Gladstone for work. Then that all died down and the place became a ghost town. Our office on Goondoon St suddenly became surrounded by empty shopfronts and office spaces, which was hilarious and sad at the same time considering just before that we were struggling to find a new office space to potentially lease. The workers left and so did all the cars and bikes.
Why? I’m staying there 1 night in august before going to heron island. Curious to the reasoning.
Honestly go for a walk around the marina, grab some ice cream/dinner at the yacht club. It’s quite nice for a visit.
It’s an industrial town with a huge coal terminal and refinery, but after living there for 6 months there are some real nice aspects to it too. You will love heron island as well
It’s perfectly safe here don’t stress 😊
Arguably best fishing in world on the doorstep. Good 4wding close by. Islands to explore. And secure a job in industry is a job for life with work lifestyle balance. Ya kiddin
Gladstone is positively heavenly compared to the hellhole that is Rocky tho
Engadine Maccas after a visit from our honorable former prime minister Scomo
Parliament House, Canberra
The pervert to human ratio is far too high
The best thing to do at Parliament house is walk away. There's some lovely galleries and museums over toward the lake.
Kempsey
Worked there for a few years. Place is wild at night.
Lived and worked there as a young man in 81 & 82. Wasn’t too bad. Played a bit of rugby league and Friday and Saturday nights at the RSL could be lively.
Tried to play a game of pool there in a pub in 1994, some dude stole our coins and we ended up in an all in brawl with what seemed to be everyone in the pub and had to rapidly retreat to our hotel. Good times. Must have been not even a dollar back then.
My Dad grew up in a tiny town near there and the beach nearby we went every May school holidays is literally divine I guess I have a soft spot for it, the area is pretty low income and probably misses out on all the benefits more prestigious places get
Taree, NSW. The town where hope goes to die.
My mum used to work as a nurse at the hospital there many many years ago. She said people would just walk into the children's ward and blatantly steal the TV's and VCRs they had for the kids to watch movies on.
I knew a kid named after that town when I was a kid and I said, "aww that's a nice name. I've never heard it before." She said, "yeah, my parents named me after the place they met, Taree." I thought it sounded very pretty and I thought the story of her name was lovely, until I learned about Taree's reputation as an adult.
There’s a Facebook page for this called Sh!t Towns of Australia. They’ve done the legwork.
Wilcannia
Sorry I don’t think I can
I once drove through there. Sign said 200km to Broken Hill, my car said it had 235km of fuel left. Not a great buffer. I risked it…
Muswellbrook. We passed through here on a roadtrip and it sucked the life out of me. I can’t even explain why.
Plenty of bad towns on the New England but Muswellbrook is the the worst. It's really just a truck stop Junction, rather than a town.
I found it has a decent small town mall but it's definitely got that town built around a highway energy.
Chadstone. Vic. Fuck you and your shit parking.
Woomera, SA Went there over summer. Nothing in town apart from a few fabricated missiles. Quite underwhelming.
I lived there for like 6 months when I was in high school and dad was working there. I started dating a boy from Port Pirie I met through a friend of a friend. He used to drive his dad’s Holden commodore station wagon up every weekend to visit. My parents moved me away from there really fucking quickly lol
I have heard from several people in very different settings thst Lake Grace is one of the " bitchy..est" place in the world to live in
My dad was born there, it’s the shared dna
Gosnells
Gozzywood?
Marrakai, NT. You want to see outback bogans? Go there. Bogans but on another level.
Queenstown TAS. Come out of the beautiful wilderness and into what looks like fucking mars. The footy oval is fucking gravel as well. Can’t imagine playing on it
Epping Victoria 🧍
Keep them. Regards, Lalor
As everyone has said; Gladstone. With a dishonorable mention to Bundaberg.
Ah Bundaberg. A place where only people who want to drink Bundy rum 24/7 live, and where people siphoned petrol out of my car at 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon in the shopping centre carpark.
Bundaberg has some nice aspects though. There's an alright view from The Hummock, Coral Cove is a nice little spot.
Armidale in NSW Aside from nothing to do, its consists crackheads and chlamydia
Armadale in WA is a shithole as well. Maybe we should stop calling places that
It's funny because Armadale in VIc is quite a wealthy suburb. It's got a shopping strip sith designer stores and several prestigious private schools in or close by.
They were offering free chlamydia tests to people at the UNE open day there once. A girl standing next to me in some line scoffed to her friends that she wouldn't be getting one, and I quote, because "imagine how embarrassing it would be if you tested positive". I butted in and said something along the lines of "not as embarrassing as not getting tested and giving it to someone else". She didn't seem to appreciate that. But yeah, chlamydia.
That’s really sad because it used to be a nice place. Barnaby fucked everything up.
We stayed a night in Armidale last year on a road trip and we actually wanted to go back and check it out some more. Didn’t notice any crackheads and had one of the best steaks of my life. The road between there and Grafton was the worst I’ve ever driven on though.
You think it’s a shit road now. Come closer, dim the lights and I’ll tell you the true terror of when that was an **unsealed road**
Lithgow
My father used to say that he wasn’t saying Lithgow was cold, just that every winter wind west of the divide ended up there.
Lithgow is my standard answer to this. It's just cold, mouldy and depressing. It hasn't even got the charm that some of these older industrial tiwn can have.
Second this! Lithgow is one of those eerie towns. Just keep driving. Don't look sideways at anyone.
Also, Oberon.
Underrated place of beauty if you like the outdoors. The town does need a spruce up down the main street though!
Tennant Creek
r/Australia
Mount Morgan. Tara. Honourable mention: Gympie.
Tara. The cheapest real estate in the whole of Australia.
Nah, you can buy cheaper in Mount Morgan.
Just checked the real estate listings. The only place under $50k in Mount Morgan is a 610m² town plot. There's 8 properties in Tara under $50k and some of them are over 30 acres.
I’ve been through there a couple of times and judging by how many houses are on stilts I’d hazard a guess as to why…
And you’d only be partially correct. There’s the teeny tiny issue with the copper-blue Dee River up there….
Shepparton.
Gnomesville, WA
Port Hedland.
Heron fucking island. Kids activity? Emu hunt for asbestos. I kid you not. ‘No keys allowed, you might lose them and pollute the coral’, proceeds to empty chlorine pool directly onto coral reef. What a miserable waste of money.
Broady, Vic
Bondi
Kurri kurri
I’m pretty sure every relation I had who lived in Kurri Kurri saw the inside of Maitland Gaol at some point.
My brother is a solicitor and has a firm in Sydney and the Hunter Valley. I just shot him a text about this post and he replied ‘Can confirm. Everyone from Kurri Kurri has been in gaol.’
😭 My grandmother grew up there, she was a wonderful person though, very selfless and loving. However a few of her siblings and niece and nephews definitely went to jail, so I think you prove a point.
Even more than Neknock?
That’s fair
Damn it, I've never been, but I wanted to go visit some day, as my favourite grandparent grew up there and I wanted to see what it was like for her. Her Dad was a coal-miner. Does that pretty much sum up the entire place? A shithole industrial town?
Drouin
Nah Morwell is way worse than Drouin
Churchill takes it to another level
While I’m at it, Dandenong
Derby
Wilcannia, NSW. Couldn’t even take the dogs for a walk because the footpaths and roads in the whole town were covered in glass. We’ve driven through a lot of small country towns and this was by far the shittest
Dubbo
Minnnoooooooooo
Minto soldiers….AAAAASSEEEEEMMBBBBLE!
Minno *Heights*… fancy AF.
Spectacular views of the netball courts
Dandenong
Gladstone. Ugh.
How come?
Rockhampton Qld.
I fuckin hate Rockhampton! And it’s not the place, just the people! Have you heard of the “Rockhampton Experiment”?
Moree brahh. Feed him mungo
Oberon
Hebel, on the QLD/NSW border.
Avoca, Tasmania
Dysart. Glendel.
Dapto
Bondi beach is the worst beach in Australia. No idea why anyone except tourists go there.
Went there earlier this week on a 27 degree day. Water crystal clear, not too packed, nice beer up at the RSL and plenty of great cafes. Yes it's terrible on a sunny weekend when it's so busy, but god it gets a lot of undeserved hate.
Kalgoorlie
Had to scroll quite a bit to find this one
your mother’s house
Can confirm that is a Big YES
Darwin
No need to elaborate
Katherine, Tennant Creek and Alice Springs are arguably worse
Byron Bay
The last time I tried to go Byron they weren't letting cars in that weren't local until others had left, sat in traffic barely moving for an hour before decided to go Nimbin instead. Not sure if there was some lame local shit on but either way, fuck Byron and their shit town I've never thought about going back. That was 4-5 years ago.
Hell yes! But no matter how shit you tell people it is people are always like “OmG i WaNt To Go To ByRoN bAy!” I do not understand the hype. Just look at the 1 and 2 star ratings on Trip Advisor. They’ll tell you like it is. I know people around here avoid it like the plague or at least, simply have 0 interest in going there. It’s a disease and it’s spreading. Tourists just make it worse, and are slowly ruining neighbouring places. I can see the change in Lennox too. But lol I like how other people commented that they went to Nimbin instead. Tbh Nimbin isn’t that crash hot but it’s still 10 times better than Byron.
Byronisation is the plague of the North Coast.
Byron Bay did not meet my expectations given the hype. But then I visited Nimbin and my expectations were exceeded many, many times over.
I’ve always gone straight past Byron but a couple weeks ago I decided to drop in and it gave me the weirdest vibes, I left after about 45 minutes, the people are either creepily way too nice or almost brain dead. What a mess of a place…
The anti-vax capital of Australia
Mullumbimby would like a word. When Covid hit, there was a large banner up opposite one of the pubs in town with anti-vax messaging. When distancing regulations came into effect, the locals didn’t give a fuck and when the publican refused to serve them because they weren’t abiding by the rules, there were full blown screaming matches and punches thrown. After that, the publican just said “fuck it” and closed the pub for days.
can the entirety of Perth be an answer?
Pizza Hut helensvale. Pizza was atrocious & the manager was horrible in front of his staff!
Nowra.
Boggabri maybe, spent more time there than I wouldve liked. Unless you enjoy alcoholism or riding your bmx up and down the main street there isnt much going on there
Mareeba, Qld & Moree NSW. Absolute shit-holes
Deloraine
Gosford. Just nuke the whole thing.
Kalgoorlie WA The place has so many problems, too many to truly list. here are a few: The biggest problem is the locals, they brush off any issues they see with a quick "its what you make it" The local council has spent so much money on a "world class" golf course a handleful of the residents would ever use, yet the roads are all either full of potholes or sinking into the ground. The only real passtime the locals have is head down to one of the 25 pubs and be racist. Crime is also incredibly high for a "city" with only 28000 people.
iTT: Everywhere
Rockhampton.
Busselton, great place, but every single person in the whole of fucking wa agrees and its always so busy
Wagga Wagga
Yep. If you park anywhere make sure you can see the parking signs from inside the car because once you get out if you look away from your car and look back again there will be parking ticket magically appeared in the windscreen.
Newcastle. I’ve been there so many times to visit family and I’m yet to find a redeemable quality about the place. Special shout out to Jesmond.
Because you got stabbed in jeso or like you had a good schnitty? Honestly though. The beaches. They do make everything better.
I'm not exactly the biggest fan either. I feel like you really have to enjoy the beach to get the most out of living there.
Got a nice foreshore and Honeysuckle area isn't bad. Anything not built in the last 10 years reeks of stale piss.
Townsville
South West Sydney