But the history of the tree goes back much fur-ther than that. It’s far older than white settlement, and I like to imagine a time when it stood together with its family, just one of a number of impressive tall trees. When it meant something very different to the Indigenous people who lived beneath it.

You’ve probably figured out by now that I love this tree. I love it because it’s no longer beautiful, no longer an attraction that would stop a tourist. And I love it because it reminds me of my mum.

I think that’s why Dad wants to save the tree, too: it reminds him of Mum – of her brokenness. He hasn’t actually told me that, though. Even though we talk pretty openly with each other these days, saying that about Mum would take honesty to a whole other level. But I just know that’s how he feels because he’s always appreciated broken things: the chipped cup, the grass-stained jeans, the book with other people’s bent pages. He likes imperfections.

Our house, the one that burnt down, was full of broken things Dad had found in hard rubbish. At night, after the neighbours had put out stuff for the collectors, he’d walk around our streets and take anything that still had life left. He’d bring it home and use it somehow. That’s where my first bike came from. And the double hammock, which hung between the thick trunks of two gum trees by our back fence. And my netball ring in the front yard, where I practised shooting goals with my best friend, Bridge. Once, he even made a lamp out of salvaged bits and pieces: the base of a music stand, the wooden leg of a spinning wheel, and a rainbow-coloured glass mixing bowl, which he used for the lightshade.

In the fire, all his found things burnt down into little blackened piles. He didn’t mind that. He said it gave him an excuse to start again.

I remember once asking him why we couldn’t just buy things from shops like other people. He laughed and told me that he liked things that had a life before. Stuff in a shop didn’t have history. Stuff that had belonged somewhere else had character. I get it. That’s why I sit near the Separation Tree when I finish work, not down near the lake where the tourists go. This tree has character. That’s what makes it so special.