The sounds of table tennis balls bouncing off bats and tables echo through the hall.
Players have furrows between their eyebrows watching a tiny white sphere hurtling towards them, sending it back across the table with practiced spins.
It's Table Tennis ACT's training day, and there's a dozen players facing off in their Kingston centre.
As we sit in front of the TV watching the Paris Olympics, many of us are trying to pick the sport we could compete in at the Games.
For many of us, table tennis seems like an easy pick: we're the reigning champ of our family competition, and no one has beaten us since Aunty Kate in 2009.
Table tennis is a sport that remains perplexing for many Australians; a game we play in garages against our families and friends is in the Olympics?
But it's a game that has more to it than meets the eye with spins and speeds that are deceptively technical.
For Paralympian Jodie Elkington-Jones, learning to play table tennis has been a far cry from the ovals she's used to.
She represented Australia in two Paralympic Games in track and field, and has now turned her hand to a very different kind of sport.
"It's definitely tested my ability to strategize a game," she said.
"I grew up with a table at home and thought, oh, it's not overly difficult if you just go and hit a ball.
"But coming into it, there is so many different aspects you have to learn and understand, the spin and the shot, and when to go and when to not go."
Live long to play ping pong
For head coach George Logothetis, the sounds of bats and balls are music to his ears.
The former Greek national champion is supporting the Australian Paralympic team in Paris after spending the past decades coaching local players.
"[Table tennis] is like you are trying to play chess and you are running a 100 metres sprint at the same time, so you have to make the decision super fast," he said.
"Sometimes the ball is coming faster from the other side of the table three times faster than the blink of the eye, so we don't have enough time to react."
Despite being an Olympic sport since 1988, table tennis is still seen by many Australians as just a fun pastime.
President of Table Tennis Australia Nicole Adamson said they're still fighting to show Australians that the game is more than just a backyard sport.
"Historically it was definitely seen as a sport that was socially and community led, people playing with tables at homes and in their garages," she said.
"Most of us have picked up a bat and had a hit and understand the basic rules of how to play, but then over the last 10 years or so we've really progressed from a high performance side of things."
Table Tennis ACT member Song Chen, age 76, said he gets a mix of reactions when he tells people he plays table tennis.
"Some laugh, some cry, some are intrigued," he laughed.
"They've got an image of it, I think, that you play it on holidays or you play it on a cruise ship and it's all a social thing, but it's a genuine sport."
Allez Australia!
Australia has taken a strong squad to Paris; 13 para-athletes have qualified for the Paralympics, which is the most the team have ever had.
The Olympic team has taken six athletes to the 2024 Games.
Australia has never won a table tennis medal in Olympic competition; the best result was fifth place in the women's doubles in 2000.
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Table tennis is a sport dominated by Asia; of the best players in the world the top four are Chinese, in the men's and the women's competitions.
Table tennis is China's national sport with more than 200,000 players in the country, and it's a common pastime for many other Asian nations.
But Ms Adamson said Australia shouldn't count itself out of the competition.
"We have smaller populations than a lot of countries we compete against [in other sports], and yet we still manage to do really well," she said.
The name of the game
Table tennis is not just a matter of hitting the ball square on with enough force to send it across the net; it's a complex game that demands incredibly fast reflexes.
At the elite level, table tennis balls travel between 110 and 120kmh, the same speed as a car on the Hume highway.
With a court less than four metres long, reaction times must be less than a second.
Ms Adamson said people often underestimate just how much fitness is required to play the game.
"You don't appreciate it until you actually see it in person, and you see how much the players are moving in and around the tables and the speed at which they're having to move," she said.
The sport has three main spins; the flat ball, where the ball is hit with almost no spin at all, the back spin, where the player puts a reverse spin on the ball, and the side spin, where the ball curves around itself, which Mr Logothetis describes as "very impressive".
Similar to tennis, table tennis has two strokes; a forehand and a backhand. Players win games by scoring 11 points in a similar set up to tennis.
Mr Logothetis said players can manipulate play by knowing how the ball moves: a standard ball dropped from a height of 30cm on to the table will bounce up 23cm.
"That's why we're using a lot of the muscle memory, so we try to hit as many balls as we can," he said.
"Then at some stage the body automatically will realise where it has to go and what to do."
