When my housemate Tom told me about the job he said there’d be things about it that I might not be that comfortable with. He’d done it for a while himself and said he’d make a call for me to the people he’d worked for. I was picked up early my first day by the arborist in a ute. “G’day,” he said, slotting the twitching gearshift into place, emphatically, as if in place of a handshake. Alan went up the trees with the chainsaw and drove us to the jobs. Further on we picked up Adrian, the other ground crew.…