She is explaining how, after retiring 15 years ago, a quick spur of the moment decision to stop at a cafe in Bolwarra led to her and husband Warren working an extra 15 years in a business they knew absolutely nothing about.

And now, they're retiring a second time ... this time for good. But let's start at the beginning.

"We dropped in for a coffee at the cafe at Bolwarra which happened to be on the market and suddenly, as we're leaving, Warren says 'Oh my God, I want this place'," she said. 'We had worked seven years at The Cheesecake Shop at Green Hills and I was happily retired. But after two years of putting his feet up, Warren clearly wasn't.

"Anyway, Warren rang up and four hours later we had a new business. I told him I'd do it for three years, and 15 years later here we are ... clearly I'm not the boss in this relationship," she says, laughing again.

"Most of my working days were in a pharmacy, Warren was a sheet metal worker, so we had zero coffee shop experience. Like I said, nothing about this story was normal."

The couple made a few changes - a courtyard out the back, a few more tables inside, but kept the old style ambience.

The weeks were long - from 6am to 2pm seven days - "Warren would get up at five, and I'd go in later" - but they loved it from the start.

"The local community has been really welcoming and now we have many friends here," Barbara said. "We've never had any trouble. We've always treated people with respect and they have treated us the same way.

"It's great that little kids who came in to buy lollies would work casual shifts here years later and then go on to university. It has been very rewarding.

"We had two couples who used to walk every Friday morning and drop in for coffee. They're in their 80s now, but even today they still drop in for breakfast, regular as clockwork every Friday."

If it all sounds too good to be true, there was a tough period when Warren had a cancer scare and couldn't work for 12 months.

Barbara took on the extra workload, including the dreaded 'early shift'.

"What can you do? You just suck it up and do it," she says. "Warren felt really bad because he could see it meant a lot more work for me, but we got through it.

"A lot of our customers would offer to help in any way they could. With any heavy work that required a male's strength, we had a regular who would tell us to let him know and he'd pop over. As I say, the community have been so good to us."

So, any chance of coming out of retirement a second time?

"You're joking."

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