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CANBERRA - They don't come too much tougher than 3-year-old Trista Foley and her 2-year-old pal Dekota Vincent.
The two toddlers were discharged from hospital yesterday after surviving 26 hours alone in storm-lashed Western Australian bush wearing only pyjamas and socks.
Police and rescue workers remain amazed at the pair, long after they emerged scratched, dirty and wet from scrub near Wilyabrup Creek, close to the coastal wine-growing centre of Yallingup, south of Perth.
Before searchers heard their voices grave fears were held for their survival in atrocious conditions that saw almost 30mm of rain lash the area and temperatures plummet to 11C.
Search organisers believed adults would have been hard pushed to stay alive: the toddlers' tiny bodies were considered far less likely to tolerate hours in the open without food or shelter.
"What they don't have is an adult's fear about death," police Senior Sergeant Brian Wilkinson told reporters.
The children's reunion with their frantic parents was an emotional climax to a search that brought an entire region together, overwhelming police with so many offers of help they were forced to turn volunteers away.
The youngsters had been holidaying at a Wilyabrup property - Dekota with his parents from Perth and Trista with her mother from Victoria.
About 10.30am on Sunday their parents became aware that their sound of playing had stopped.
After an increasingly panicked search through the surrounding bush the police were called at 2.30pm, launching a massive search that included helicopters using heat-seeking equipment, tracker dogs, horses and almost 300 police, state emergency service members and local volunteers.
The toddlers' footprints faded into the bush as soil became gravel, confounding trackers as the weather deteriorated and night began to fall.
Late on Sunday afternoon, fearing for the worst, police were forced to call off the search until first light on Monday. The hunt for Trista and Dekota resumed with grim determination but fading hopes.
Dekota's mother, Emma Vincent, was almost in despair. "We were yelling out to them yesterday through the day, waiting for the cries of 'mummy', but we never hear them," she said.
Trista's father, Daniel Foley - who is separated from her mother - flew on the first flight he could catch from Wagga Wagga in New South Wales.
Local winemakers Merilyn and Graham Hutton, following a hunch, decided to check outside the perimeter of a search area set by what experts believed would be the limits of the toddlers' endurance.
Three kilometres from where the pair had gone missing, near the mouth of Wilyabrup Creek, the winemakers called again and - barely above the noise of a helicopter - heard faint replies.
"We heard the kids calling out and we followed the sound," Merilyn Hutton told reporters.
"Standing beside the scrub was a little red head and then a little white head popped up too. I just gathered them both up and she said 'Mummy' and I said, 'No, I'm not mummy but I'm going to take you to mummy'."
Trista's mother, Deanne Reeve-Norman, burst into tears when the news broke amid hugs and cheers from the other searchers.
Emma Vincent was in awe at the number of people who helped search. "It's amazing the number of people that just came out and were prepared to just drop everything and stay out all night if they had to to find the kids," she told ABC radio.
A night in hospital confirmed that the toddlers had suffered little from their ordeal.
