A
town of 25000 people on the South Coast of
New South Wales,
Australia. It's the largest town in the
Shoalhaven council area, and a hub for
tourists flocking to the region for some strange reason over the
Christmas Holidays. The name Nowra means 'Black
Cockatoo' in the local
Aboriginal language.
Nowra is an odd town. Among it's other notable features, it was built around a drained swamp (which
floods the
High School's football field in heavy rain) and boasts a
Doomsday cult and a
Witch's coven. The outlying towns are no better, with one place,
Sanctuary Point boasting an
Emu Shop, which offers fresh Emu
Pie.
I believe the
Shoalhaven area also has one of the state's highest
youth drinking rates, but I could be talking out of my
arse here.
Historically, the local
paper mill was the largest local employer, but young people usually leave town because of the lack of decent
employment opportunities (beyond fast food and supermarket jobs) for those not interested in
milking cows for a living.
Nowra's not that bad, it just has basically
nothing going for it. That said, it's in no danger of
dying like many smaller towns.
Nowra is very much a
Cow-town. The surrounding area is filled with
dairy farms, giving Nowra a rather "hickish" image in the eyes of folks from '
the big smoke') in this case the city of
Wollongong. I was once mocked by a theme-park
clown in Sydney because I was from Nowra...
Nowra is also a
Navy-town, a mere
stone's throw away from the
Royal Australian Navy's air base,
HMAS Albatross.
Basically, Nowra is your typical boring, somewhat
feral Australian town, one for which the label '
shithole' would be apt. But for all its faults, Nowra has a special place in my heart, mainly due to the people I left behind when I moved away.
It's still an absolute
hole though.