As Jacqueline McKenzie and I chase the setting sun around the foreshore of Sydney’s Blackwattle Bay I ask her why this particular harbour inlet is so special to her – and for the next 30 or so minutes the conversation follows her stream of consciousness.
It starts with a love of gardening awakened unexpectedly during the final weeks of palliative care for her beloved late cairn terrier Hershal (“my beautiful canine partner of 16-and-a-half years”), and takes a circuitous, improbable route through the blight of meth addiction in Vancouver (where she lived in the mid-2000s while filming sci-fi series The 4400), her theatre training at Nida, and kayaking with the Irish actor Fiona Shaw (at the time, the partner of McKenzie’s Deep Blue Sea co-star and friend Saffron Burrows).
