Chicken kebabs, sausages and chops on the barbecue. Purple balloons and crepe streamers that flutter in a raw wind and a doe-eyed dog who tries his luck begging for scraps at a suburban house in Hopper's Crossing.
This could be any Australian barbecue, any family. Young children totter about and there is a metallic scrape of cutlery in the sink as two women wash the dishes.
But the guests have come because the woman with the solemn, rounded face at the centre of the table has breast cancer. She is dying.
This is Rebecca Cohen's "living" wake, a rare chance to celebrate her life and bid goodbye in the flesh, an unconventional approach that is slowly growing in popularity.
She wants to tell them she loves them, in person. When else would she get the chance?
Rebecca is a mother of four children. Two are young adults and two are tiny, both under two. Rebecca's life has been complicated and tough and adventurous, and she is not ready to leave it just yet.
"I can't stand up, because my back hurts," she tells the group. "But I love you all to pieces and it does mean everything to me that you will look after me the way you do. One day you can all do this again together and reminisce."
As Australia's population grows and ages, the need to talk about death has become more pressing.
About 300,000 people in Victoria will die in the next eight years, with the number of deaths forecast to increase 8 per cent each year between now and 2021.
There is a growing push for people to be better informed about death.
Last week the country's first conference on "death literacy" in Sydney drew palliative care workers, death doulas, funeral directors and celebrants from around the country.
The growing demand for bespoke funerals, green funerals and ceremonies such as living wakes make death a social, rather than just medical, experience, says convenor Kerrie Noonan, a clinical psychologist who works in palliative care.
Just minutes before her wake begins, Rebecca Cohen's phone rings. It is a nurse at the hospital.
A final round of chemotherapy scheduled for the coming week was cancelled, she is told, there would be no point. Instead they will talk about increasing palliative care.
It is silly to be upset, Rebecca says in a measured voice when she hangs up. She has known she was dying for months. But this was it. No going back.
Rebecca has made her funerals plans (purple urn and balloons).
But the most difficult thing – the tears flow whenever she talks about it – will be leaving Aleisha, 21, Tahlia 17, Ellie, 2, and Jesiah.
As she talks, Rebecca plays with a Star of David around her neck. Her father was Jewish, she likes to think it will guide her home.
Soon, once I have gone, the family will gather around with a glass of wine and properly relax.
The children will fall asleep in someone's lap and the dog will finish off the sausages, as stories flow into the cold night.
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