Even without the awning, I was woken at 5:00am by a crazy wind rocking Turtle Shell. It’s always unsettling when your house moved with the breeze – even though I know Turtle Shell weighs in at over a tonne, I can’t quite shake the feeling that I’m about to flip over. And you can’t just sleep through it either, because there’s no rhythm to it, so I spent some long sleepless (and quietly, irrationally worried) minutes until it died down again and I could get some more sleep.

This was the first morning I didn’t feel the need to turn on the heat before I got out of bed, so that was nice. But don’t be fooled – the weather was just trying to lull me into a false sense of security! The wind picked up again around lunchtime, blowing so hard (and with such a chill) that it quickly made it the coldest day I’d experienced yet.

I went on a short tourist drive to a place called Donelly’s Castle.

It’s at the end of a dirt road, and the ‘castle’ is actually these huge granite outcroppings.

A sign directs you towards either a lookout or caves. I went to the lookout first, and didn’t spend very much time up there, as the wind and rain made it a very cold place to be.

The caves aren’t really caves, just little pockets and passages where the granite has been worn away.

Some of the passages are a tight squeeze!

There’s graffiti on a lot of the rocks as well. I thought this one was particularly inspired.

Despite what it says, I didn’t see any Yowies. Probably at home keeping warm like any sensible creature would.

I went back to huddle in my warm Turtle Shell, and Mum and Dad turned up around 5. We went to Varias for dinner, a restaurant attached to the Wine and Tourism College. The food was lovely but very deceptive – when they put it in front of you, you think it’s a reasonable amount of food and you can eat it all, but it’s so rich you’re soon full up! Mum and I split a banoffee pie for dessert, and even then we only just managed to finish it.

It was a very cold night, and the cabin Mum and Dad had rented just had one of those old oil heaters for warmth, so I lent them my electric throw blanket. We watched an episode of Archer and then I retired to the beautifully warm Turtle Shell for the night. For the first time, I left the heat on when I went to bed instead of turning it off, but I turned it off again at about 1 in the morning when I woke up sweating under all my blankets.  Uncomfortable, yes, but it was a nice change.