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.

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