Australia's Most Bestest Town In Australia

And the winner of the Australian Traveller award for Australia's Best Town, 2009, is...

YAMBA???

WHAT THE FUCK??!!?!!1!eleven!?!!

Don't get me wrong, Yamba's not a hole. It's a complete and utter fucking shithole which needs a 'dozer run through the length of its preposterously and ponderously long main drag, but that's not the point. How does Yamba - YAMBA, for fuck's sake - beat bigger, brighter and better-known holiday spots like Byron, Margaret River, Apollo Bay and Woodenbong to snare the one and only national trophy for Most Bestest Township, Village Or Hamlet In Australia Evaaaaaarrrr, awarded by the country's leading (and possibly only) tourism and travel mag and selected by a panel of tourism and travel experts? And more to the point, how does Yamba win the above without the head of the local chamber of commerce having to personally blow every member of aforesaid panel of tourism and travel experts?

The clincher, it was reported, was the deciding question put to the panellists to sort the wheat from the chaff: on a scale of one to ten, how likely are you to recommend a friend add one hour to their trip just to see this town? Now considering Yamba is a good 20 kays off the highway and the road out there is truly fucking dire, this would give the panellists approximately fifteen minutes out of their hour having got into town to actually see the joint and get back on their way. Which in fairness is plenty of time to see all the myriad sights and delights of Yamba in their entirety. Even inclusive of a stop for petrol and a slash at the public facilities.

Now, there are many good things about Yamba. Or at least, there used to be. The Pacific, the most spectacularly positioned pub in the land, used to have Reschs Smooth (RIP, God rest its soul) on tap, and the bakery in Coldstream St - midway along the drunken downhill stagger from the Pacific back to the Captain's shed for more beers - used to open after Pacific closing time to sell freshly baked pies to half-cut munters like ourselves, probably as the smell of the pies baking would have enticed more inebriated and/or impatient souls than ourselves to rip the fucking doors down and help themselves to the steaming meaty goodness being concocted therein. And a bunch of slammin'-hottie surfie chicks from my high school lived there. But it's unlikely any of the above attractions, even if they were still available in today's Yamba, could be properly enjoyed by the average traveller in their fifteen minutes in town. Well, maybe some of the girls, depending how poorly the passage of time has treated them in the interim, and whether they could get time off from serving in the surf shop or the fish co-op.

So what to do with your fifteen minutes (give or take a few depending on bladder pressure) in the thriving metrop of Yambahole? Bewildered? Perplexed? Mildly disorientated? Well never fear as the World of Bollocks presents Fifteen Minutes Of Lame: What To Do In Yamba, Australia's Most Bestest Town In Australia 2009, Or So Some Yuppie Wanker Travel Mag Reckons, The Lot Of Choad Warriors.

• Visit the legendary surf break of nearby Angourie. Get dropped in on by legendary surf king Nat Young. Punch him in the head. Marvel at the mystery and wonder of the famous Angourie Blue Pools, daredevil swimming hole for generations of local kids. Wonder not at the lack of mystery as to why noone has been allowed to swim there in ten years since it became the Blue-Green Algae Pools.
  
  
• If, by chance, you happen to be have mistakenly packed a bucket full of golf balls which you have found surplus to requirements, the water hazard off the fifth tee at Yamba Golf Course, affectionately named 'the Shit Hole', is an excellent place to lose them. However, entrepreneurs should note it is a poor place to dive for them, being as it is the overflow pond for the neighbouring sewage treatment works.
  
  
• Go wildlife spotting in Crystal Waters, a.k.a. Blacktown-On-Sea, in the hunt for the elusive Snaggle-Toothed Bogan (Bevanus dazzanshazza) in its natural habitat - the TAB at Yamba Shores Tavern on dole day.
  
  
• Marvel at how two generations of apparently qualified state and council town planners could fuck up a township of 5600 people quite as spectacularly as to have two completely separate town centres - the Old Town and the Bogan Western Suburb - separated by a 5km stretch of road, limited to 50 km/h, along which approximately eight billion cars have to funnel every day in either direction. Or the fact that a town of near-as-buggery six thousand people has no high school and the nearest such mythical creation is 20 kays away. Or that the Bogan Western Suburb in question (Ipswich Waters to most) is built on a bed of reclaimed swamp, sand and hastily-bulldozed mangroves and makes Ross River look mosquito-free by comparison.
  
  
• Go to Iluka instead, the fish and chips are better and the drive out there's less likely to bore you into a drainage culvert. Or Evans Head, or Wooli, or any of those other quaint little NSW North Coast fishing villages. Just don't go to Brooms Head. Stay right the fuck away from there. It's really bloody awful, honest. Noone in their right mind would possibly want to go there, so don't. Particularly not any of you fucking punishing yuppie fucktard readers of Australian Yuppie Fucktard Traveller. Brooms Head is definitely not a place you want to go.
  

On second thoughts, Yamba is probably about right for you lot. Go there. You'll love it. Plenty of room to park the Lexus 4WD, plenty of trendy streetscape cafes to be seen in, plenty of scope to tell Alistair and Marjorie back in Ascot or Mosman about your tremendously rustic adventure slumming it amidst the simple rural folk. Yup, Yamba it is. Bestest town in Australia, beautiful beaches, friendly locals. Tell 'em Dr Yobbo sent ya. They'll probably just look at you blankly, scratch their balls and tell you to fuck off, but at least it'll be a laugh for me.

The Doctor is OUT.

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PS An afterthought - so the more pertinent question is, if Yamba's the town you'd add an hour to your trip to see, which are the towns you'd add an hour to your trip to avoid?

A quick Arsebook voxpop turned up Tamworth, Guyra, Walcha, Muswellbrook, Scone... pretty much anything on the New England Highway actually, which is hereafter renamed the 'Don't Fucken Bother' Tourist Route (Farmadale gets a pass for pretty autumn leaves, pretty UNE first-years (read 'pretty pliant after a couple of RTDs') and a couple of pretty clever buggers who just emerged from their shed with a fully operational market-ready electric car), Denilquin, West Wyalong, Casino ('The Happy Place To Shop', allegedly, and home of the Beef Week Queen, the only beauty pageant in which the contestants are difficult to tell from the breeds they seek to represent), and of course Gympie, an exercise in nominative determinism if there ever was one. However, no suggestions got close to the Holy Trinity of Arsebag Townships, the Warrego Highway Triumvirate of the Switch, Gatton, and above all others, Woombie Land, home of redneck ute-driving fucktards called Brad who invite themselves along to one-day games.

Suggestions, as ever, welcome...