Which comes first, loneliness or violence? This is the story of love born in a very dark place between a man who wants to belong and a woman who wants to be forgotten. On a stormy night, they shelter in an abandoned summer home and tentatively discover what it is that they have in common. But just when it seems something beautiful might emerge, the opposite appears.
The Magic Tree is an exploration into human behaviour at a time when humanity seems determined to endlessly repeat the mistakes of the past. It looks at why good people are capable of doing bad things and asks if love alone can save us.
The Magic Tree opened at the The Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh in August 2008.

Clinton Fernandes is Senior Lecturer in Strategic Studies at the Australian Defence Force Academy campus of the University of New South Wales, Australia. Dr. Fernades is the coordinator of the Politics discipline in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and has taught a number of courses, including Comparative Politics of Southeast Asia, Modern Political Ideologies, and the Role of Modern Intelligence. He is co-editor of War and Society journal, and the author of Reluctant Indonesians: Australia, Indonesia and the future of West Papua (2006) and Reluctant Saviour: Australia, Indonesia, and the Independence of East Timor (2004). He formerly served in the Australian Defence Force as an intelligence officer, and was Head of Intelligence for the Australian Defence Force Support to the Sydney Olympics in 2000.