AusBonsai

Just about to pick one of these up for a freebie of marketplace, apparently has a 2m spread on the canopy. Any advice on how to handle it. It has come out of coastal sandy soil.

OK so it had been left out front for me to pick up, I did not get a chance to talk to the guy.
It came from sandy beach soil, still had some soil around the inner roots and was wrapped in a wet towel.
leaves are ok but quite a few bare sections that I imagine were already that way in the ground.
it's quite leggy, a couple of the trunks actually had some low sprouts as seen in the pics, those were the least happy branches, so I knocked them off, maybe the tree knew they were dying and shot some new sprouts?
I've never delt with a dig like this so I know there is some great knowledge on here re. natives so I would be very grateful for any advice.
I have thinned it out a little and dropped it in a tub of water. I took of the tops of the most leggy and bare branches.
I was thinking to put it in a tub of 50/50 perlite and potting soil? advice welcome
should I take everything down to the lowest growth? or cut it back bare to where I want low growth?

This one got the chop back to bare wood and has started pushing growth on most of the trunks. With a bit of luck she will survive.

Sorry you didn’t get an earlier response. Looks like your strategy has worked - great find! I suggest not touching it for at least another year, in particular leaving plenty of foliage, although others on this forum will be more experienced with yamadori than I am.

My plan was to let it do its own thing for this year at least.
It's still in the shade, gets dappled sun in the morning and full shade after 1030 with about an hour of full sun from 930-1030 ish. I'm not sure when to get it out into the sun. I'll have to get some pics soon

There will be different opinions around on this. I subscribe to the view that adequate sunlight is needed to drive root growth. If it was mine, I would start giving it more sun. Not straight to full sun, but at least a few hours daily.