We slept in the next morning and caught a cab into Alice, as Chris had taken his car in to Toyota for a service. Did a bit of shopping and met up with Chris. Alison went to get her hair done and we sat around in Gloria Jeans coffee shop for a couple of hours. Alison, Beryl and I had booked in for acupuncture as we all had sore backs and it is a treatment which has really helped me in the past few years.
Chris went back to the casino and we hung around town until it was time to pick his car up at 5pm. Didn’t surprise me that it wasn’t ready, as the local Toyota dealership doesn’t have a very good reputation. We got it around 6pm and picked Chris up to go to dinner at Monte’s Pub. It was also Mulga’s trivia night so we joined in a got 2nd place. A great night and lots of fun.

Next morning we loaded the car and headed off to Tennant Creek. I drove most of the way and towards the end, I was going into a trance. Glad to get there and wake up. Straight roads, high speeds and long periods of driving are not a good combination.

I set the cruise control on 130kph and was amused to hit a couple of ‘built up areas’ where there were signs to watch out for people and slow down to the speed I was sitting on anyway – 130kph. They have an open speed limit up there. We had dinner at home that night.

Tonight we celebrated Alison’s birthday at the local Greek Restaurant. The owners put on a huge spread for Alison, Jana and another friend who had birthdays that week. A real fun night with food and drink that only the Greeks can pull off. The plate breaking deal came into play later that night and at the end, they wouldn’t even let us help clear up. A really nice family and friends of Alison and Chris too.

We had another couple of days before we had to go back to Alice, so Beryl and I drove up to the dam and then the Telegraph station and further on to Banka Banka staging area. It was very overgrown since we were there a couple of years ago and we couldn’t really explore the site for relics of the WW2 era.

Our trip was over all too soon and the kids drove us all the way back to Alice Springs, where we stayed for a couple more days until we had to fly back to Sydney.