archives page & link?

i’ve used greymatter and movabletype in the past. (i didn’t like movable type much -_-) & i was recommended by a friend to try out wordpress for my website’s photolog.
so far, coding has been easy. however, i’m looking for a way to have a link to the archives, like:
< a href=”[archivelinkhere]” >archives< /a >
and then making a template where all entries are listed on a separate templated page and sorted by category, ie:
archives.htm (or .php):
JUNE
< a href=”[permalink]”>went to dinner (6-20-2004)< /a>
< a href=”[permalink]”>movies (6-18-2004)< /a>
MAY
< a href=”[permalink]”>zoo (5-13-2004)< /a>
…… and so forth.
so far, i’ve only seen the get_archives tag and it seems to just make a list of links sorted by month, or day, or whatever. is there a way to make ALL the archived entries show up on one page and just make a link to that?
thanks in advance for any comments/response.