Barbara Flewelling crawls out of her tent pitched on the dusty red plains of north-west Queensland where she has been camping for the past six months.
For more than 14 years, the 79-year-old Canadian and her husband, Gary, have been taking extended trips to the outback town of Richmond.
"As long as our bodies let us crawl in and out of that tent, we will continue doing so," she says.
It was sapphire fever that drew the couple out to Australia in 1976.
But it was a shared passion for fossils and the embrace of a friendly bush community that saw the couple fall in love with the country they now say is home.
"It's the people. Now, it's like we're coming back home," Ms Flewelling says.
"Because people say, ‘Oh, you're back, I was thinking about you and wondering if you'd be coming this year'. Everybody is so friendly to us.
"It turns out that you meet a nicer kind of person digging for fossils than you do when you're digging opals or sapphires — people are a lot more open and there's so much to learn," Mr Flewelling says.
'Old dogs that won't die'
Over the years, the couple has become part of the furniture in the tight-knit country town while their volunteering roles at the Kronosaurus Korner museum have helped uncover significant finds in one of the richest fossil regions in the world.
Ms Flewelling says some of the finds can be a little emotional.
"My favourite find was Minnie, a baby Ichthyosaur. They average around 7 metres long, but Minnie is a metre-and-a-half," she says.
"It was the first time I found something that wasn't just a pile of bones. Minnie was a little creature that was swimming around next to Mum 100 million years ago and I became quite emotional about it. It was just a little baby!
"We love it out here — why wouldn't we?" Mr Flewelling says.
"There's always something new to find, there are always new challenges. This place is just starting to grow. And it's really nice to be involved in that growth."
In 2011, Barb and Gary found a 3-metre-long prehistoric fish fossil that dated back over 100 million years.
Another major find was an ancient sabre-toothed fish fossil that they uncovered in 2017.
Paul Stumkat, former curator at Kronosaurus Corner, calls them "very clever Canadians".
"They seem to be able to prod their digging tools into all sorts of amazing things and keep continually turning up quite amazing fossils," he says.
Years on from those finds, the couple shows no sign of putting down the tools as they continue to work seven days a week digging out on sites and helping to prepare fossils for the museum.
"Today we were digging in high-30-degree temperatures, lugging a lot of stuff around," Mr Flewelling says.
"We're like old dogs that won't die. They tend to just roll over and drop dead suddenly. That's probably going to be a description that fits us quite well."
Despite having to return to Canada each year, the couple say they leave Australia with stars in their eyes thinking about the next year's trip.
"We're passionate about what we do. We love the people, we love Australia. Every time an Australian politician does something embarrassing, we feel it just as much as everyone here feels it," Mr Flewelling says.
Ms Flewelling sums up how they feel.
"We call ourselves Can-Australians," she says.
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