On Sunday morning we move the outdoor furniture outside, to where it will eventually stay, near the shiny steel built-in gas braai. The inside of the house now looks even more empty, but maybe it’s better than giving Max and his parents the idea that we don’t know where outdoor furniture goes.

I’m trying to imagine their house. Max told me it was out of town on the way to Dayboro, but I don’t know where Dayboro is. I think he’s lived in the same place all his life, maybe even had the same bedroom. He was probably born at the Mater. His house, I’m sure, has all the furniture it needs.

Mom is kneading dough for roosterkoek, which is by far the best way to made bread rolls for a braai. Hansie is building a train track the length of the living room, now that he has even more space. Mom bought a bucket of track at Kmart. When our furniture arrives he’ll realise the room’s for all of us and not just his play area. He won’t be happy.

‘Now, you have to call sausages “snags”,’ I explain to both of them while I’m chopping the boiled potatoes for the potato salad. ‘It’s the Australian way. I’m not sure if they use the word “sausage”.’

‘I think they do,’ Mom says, looking up from the bench. She has flour all over both hands. ‘I think I’ve seen it in shops. But snags, ya. When I was buying the boerewors the butcher said, “Not just your regular snags.”’

At least potato salad should be safe. I know for a fact that South Africa didn’t invent potatoes or salad. It’s a good thing Mom doesn’t really like onions, or the salad might have been slaphakskeentjies. I bet that’s South African, just from the name. I’m looking for the Afrikaans in everything now.

Mom puts the dough aside to rise and I mix the condensed milk and mayonnaise in with the potatoes, eggs and green onions. As soon as I’ve put it in the fridge, the doorbell rings.

‘You go, you go,’ Mom says. ‘It’ll be your friend.’

In the end we all go, but I’m the one who opens the door. Mom stands near me and Hansie holds onto her leg.

‘G’day,’ Max’s dad says, and Mom says, ‘Howzit,’ before I can stop her.

‘Good, thanks,’ he says. Soon Mom will learn that, in Australia, ‘howzit’ has an answer. ‘How are you? Look, I should have invited you over to our place. I realised that right after I talked to you at school.’

‘Realised it?’ Max’s mother says. ‘I think you realised it when you called me and I said that’s what you should have done. I’m Michelle. Good to meet you.’ She reaches her hand out for Mom to shake. She has long blonde hair and is wearing tight white pants. There’s a box of chocolates in her left hand and, as she gives it to Mom, she says, ‘Welcome to Australia.’

‘And I thought I’d bring a few welcome beers, since it’s a barbie,’ Max’s father says, looking past us down the hall, as if something’s missing. He holds the beers up, six in each hand. ‘One lot of South African and one lot local.’

‘I’m Josie,’ Mom says as she shakes Max’s mother’s hand. ‘Piet’ll be sad to miss out on a beer tasting. He works at one of the mines in the north.’

‘Oh, righto,’ Max’s father says. ‘Well, I’m sure there’ll be a few left for him.’

Mom invites them in and tries to prepare them for the lack of furniture. ‘The motel was just too cramped,’ she says. ‘And this place became available early . . .’ She looks around at the empty picture hooks on the walls in the hall and shrugs. ‘Soon have it looking like home, eh.’

Max pulls a ball from his pocket. ‘So, are you going to teach me the skidder or what?’

It comes out as ‘skedder’ rather than ‘skidder’, and he makes a slicing motion with his other hand when he says it. It’s a South African accent on ‘skidder’. It’s my accent. But it’s nothing like Lachlan Parkes. The way Max does it, it’s as if the ‘skedder’ is some secret South African handball weapon. Which, at One Mile Creek, it most certainly is.

‘The skedder is not to be shared lightly,’ I tell him. ‘But I think you can be trusted.’

He flips the ball my way, and I bounce it on each of the pavers on the way to the carport.

‘It takes a bit of practice, this shot,’ I tell him. ‘You do the opposite of what you think you should do. You think you should take the ball early, but this is late, as late as you can make it. And then there’s the hand action.’ I swing my right hand with the slicing motion it needs. ‘Also the opposite of what you think you should do, since you’re cutting past the ball. I know you can slice, so that’s a good start. But you take this one a lot lower.’

I throw the ball at the wall at the end of the carport and it bounces back. I step to where I need to and, just before the second bounce, I crouch and flick my hand across the path of the ball. It fizzes off with the spin. I’ve overdone it a bit, but it makes the point. It skids along, making four fast low bounces before it ricochets off the wall again.

‘Unplayable,’ Max says, nodding. ‘Totally unplayable.’

‘You just need to land it in the right place. Point’s over, one way or the other. You nail it or you don’t. You need to pick one of their slower shots to do it to, a defensive one that’s dropping. That brings the risk down a bit.’

I step aside so he can take my spot. I throw the ball at the wall to set up his first shot, but he misses the ball entirely. He bent down when he needed to crouch. We work on that and he starts making contact. I tell him he should ease back on the slice at first and concentrate on the contact.

He does that, and soon gets some kind of feel for it. Then we’re ready for the slice to work its way back in.

Just as he’s getting it right and has hit a couple of almost certain winners, Mom comes out and asks me to set the table.

‘Max is just getting his skidder going,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll do it just now.’

‘Not just now,’ she says. ‘I want you to do it now now. It’s time to start cooking. You can call it a draw, or get back to it later.’

Max bounces the ball against the wall and then mishits his shot. The ball thumps into the car tyre and flies off to the corner of the carport.

As Mom goes to light the braai, he picks the ball up.

‘Herschelle!’ Mom calls out from the house. ‘I said “now now”.’

‘Better go,’ Max says. ‘Before it gets upgraded to triple now.’