Shaun Micallef asks to meet beneath his favourite tree, a stoic, gnarly grandfather pine bent sideways from decades of unforgiving sea winds in a park at Williamstown, the bayside suburb of Melbourne where he lives.
A publicist has sent his photograph of the meeting place, so there may be no confusion. The aesthetically composed picture silhouettes the tree’s dark canopy –resembling a chook in flight – against pristine sky, the cephalopod arms of the trunk bisecting the blue-green horizon of Port Phillip bay. The tree and the picnic table it shelters are unmissably distinctive.
