It is Christmas Day 2005 Sunday, when we reached the Airport we saw a sign pointing to Santa Teresa ..

Hmmmm sounds like a nice interesting place... Let's Go!  So we headed for Santa Teresa in one of my brother Alan’s used cars, the nice bitumen road quickly turned to a dirt track with a large ploom of dust and rocks trailing behind us.  The trip was about 100klms each way but we quickly found that if you travel at around 120kph (No speed restrictions), the corrugated, pot-holed roads don’t seem too bad .... unless you are suddenly faced with a crest or a dip, then things get kind of interesting.

Lucky I wasn’t driving my own car because used cars can do special tricks like flying and belly diving etc.  I can't wait to get the car up on a hoist to see what all the new noises are?

When we arrived at the outskirts of the Santa Teresa Community we read the sign carefully, it was very clear that alcohol was prohibited after you cross over the community border.  There were thousands of beer cans, cask bladders, general alcohol related rubbish and sad vehicles spread all around the entrance.

Just past the community entrance we met some of the locals, they actually appeared to be in very good condition for horses !

We kept driving until we saw Santa Teresa off in the distance, when we arrived at the WELCOME sign we were disappointed, at the bottom of the sign it said NO ENTRY to visitors without prior approval, so we just turned around and headed back to the Alice.

Oh well Dianne loved the trip and her feet didn't even get sunburned, when we got back we put a dollar in the local car wash's high pressure gismo to wash off the layers of red dust from "inside" and "outside" the car ... so Alan wouldn’t notice.  When we got home I opened the boot to remove a couple of chairs, you wouldn’t believe it, I think there must have been about a cubic metre of red dust in there .... now I remember what I am doing this long weekend.

I trust you won’t remember to mention any of this stuff  to Alan, I was only test driving his used car to make sure it was resilient enough for the next owner.  I am pretty sure the body work was a bit too thin because some of the rocks sounded like they came right through.  In future I think we will plan our trips a bit better, although the day was interesting and at times "riveting"