The Parfitt Family Web Page

  Goodness me. It's tax time again, 1/2 the year is over and it's nearly the end of our stay in Wadeye. I know I say it every month but boy, has July flown by. It's funny because we have no shops to visit, no shopping to do, have not turned the TV on, have no school sports to run to every 5 minutes, yet we don't have a minute to spare. Go figure!! This is the same for every month, but this one was a little different as we were off on holidays (like our whole existence isn't a holiday). The beginning of July had us heading off for a 2 week break as I mentioned in the June edition. This holiday we planned to stay fairly close to home as we didn't want to spend the whole time in the car. We will have enough of that in a few weeks time when we head off from Wadeye towards the centre. We got away at lunch time on the Thursday and again made it as far as the Mango Farm at Daly River. It is becoming a bit of a favorite of ours. Next morning we headed off to Litchfield ...

  The very beginning of June had us with the camper trailer in tow heading back down that bumpy road to Daly River for the 'Merrepen' Festival. There is a circuit of festivals that run through the dry and this is one of them. They are spread from one side of the NT to the other and so far we have been able to see two of the half dozen more famous ones. The first one that we saw was in Jabiru on our last trip in 2006. So we headed off at lunch time on Friday and our destination was the 'Mango Farm' which is located on the Wadeye side of the Daly River. As well as a mango farm it is also a large tourist park with powered and unpowered sites and cabins. It is right on the Daly and has it's own boat ramp so is very popular with the fishermen. The Daly is renowned as one of the best areas in the NT for Barra fishing. Unfortunately this time we did not have time to throw in a line but it is on our list of things to do. The mighty Daly River that had us held prisoner for s...

  On the 16th May we celebrated the half way point for our stay in Wadeye. Boy has that time come around quickly. The thought of leaving in 13 weeks is actually a little sad and not something we are looking forward to. In saying that, as much as we love it we are not sure we would actually want to stay much longer . It will be time to move on and experience another place, another culture, another chapter. We do have a few plans for the remainder of the year and have even started to plan for 2009. Talk about organised. More about that another time. So what have the Parfitts been up to for May. So far this has been our busiest month by a country mile. We started the month with a road trip to Darwin to pick up the car and camper. Originally I had planned to fly in and come back on my own. Then Lesley, one of the managers out here offered to drive us in, but unfortunately only had room for three of us, so we planned to leave poor Alex behind to stay over with one of his friends. Then o...

  So welcome the end of yet another month. It seems that once Easter is over, the year flies by, and this year I am sure will be no exception. We have now been in Wadeye for 10 weeks and it is going really well. We are not sure exactly what  we do, but we seem to be on the go all the time, with what seems to be very little down time. We are still without the car but that will change in the next few days as the dry season is well and truly upon us, with the Daly River now able to be crossed (around 0.5 metre). We are catching a lift into Darwin with one of the Clinic staff on the first weekend in May to collect the mighty Patrol. We will drive out on the Friday and have Saturday to do some serious shopping (Bunnings, KMart, coffee shops, markets!!) before heading back on Sunday with the camper trailer in tow. The trip back should take about 5-6 hours depending on the state of the road. I recently had to drive from Wadeye to Peppimenarti for work, which is about 1/2 way to Daly ...