WA - Dongara - Paradise - But Watch Out For the Locals
From Katherine Welsh in England (email address KittyKatty79@hotmail.com)
My name is Katherine Welsh and I am living back in England now, but I spent several months living and working in Dongara and when I found your website I thought I would like to write a little bit about the place since it made a big impact on my life. I met my boyfriend here and we now have a little boy!

I first arrived in Dongara/ Port Denison in 1999. The friends I was travelling with, and myself, had little to no money and we were lucky enough to get jobs out at the Market Gardens. This is a good place as long as you are prepared for extremely hard `hot` work. But it was worth 3 months hard labour for the tan and the weight loss! I actually met my boyfriend working here.

The Backpackers were fantastic. We were really made to feel a part of the family by the owners. In fact I stayed here for a few weeks before moving in with my boyfriend. The Beaches are amazing with some good surfing available. We actually drove along South Beach, which was great, but beware the seaweed that lingers here. It is host to the nasty Cobbler fish which I found out on Christmas day `99 and ended up in hospital and `out of it` on pain killers for the whole day. Also beware some of the locals, the main pub can be extremely wild especially on Saturday nights. My boyfriend had an unpleasant experience with a few of them here.

We took a day to visit Coalseam the local National Park. It is about an hour and a half away, but it was wonderful to spend the whole day, and we had the place mainly to ourselves. All of the views were absolutely breathtaking and it includes a massive selection of wildflowers.

Also during the summer they opened up the Drive-In, which I thought was great fun, since I had never been to one before. We would go and get a large pizza in town and then go and watch a couple of movies in the comfort of our own car!

It is a very beautiful town that deserves to be visited for at least a few days but I would strongly advise anyone stopping here to avoid contact with some of the locals, this was the reason that we left in the end, if it wasn`t for these `idiots` we would still be living there now!"

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