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Letter to Australia’ is the fourth story in the ‘Orchard to Orchard’ series I created in collaboration in 2024, with photographer James Sebright. The series imagines lives interacting with one site in urban Sheffield over a 300-year period, combining creative writing, photography, photomontage and archival research.

Dear Gran,

Sorry I haven’t written for a few months, it’s been crazy here. Jackie and I have bought a house! We all know Kelvin Flats had a bad reputation but we were fine there until it got really shabby, and the bedsit we’ve been in since has been miserable. Anyway the house is just off Crookesmoor Road so it’s about a fifteen-minute walk to work. Working for Midland Bank made it easier to get a mortgage. We moved in last month and we’re getting things sorted out now.

On a nice day I like to walk to work through the Ponderosa Park, and a guy at the office got me to join his volunteer group which is planting trees there. There’s a little orchard starting to take shape and this autumn we’ve had a few apples from it. I’ve enclosed a photo of the two of us in the park. You can see Jackie’s bump too! Five months now, so hopefully we’ll have the central heating in by the time the baby arrives.

Have you heard from Uncle Laurie? I’m so happy for him – he’s got a job as a mechanic at the tram depot. It’s been really tough for him being out of work for a couple of years. Mind you, he did take up oil painting as well. He’s very good at it. When he heard that the Midland Bank were going to restore the old furnace next to our office, he decided to do ‘before and after’ paintings. He’s done the before one already and it’s amazing. He’s got all these colours from the buddleia that’s growing all over it, and the cracked brickwork and the soot. It’s hard to imagine what it’ll look like when it’s been cleaned up. I guess it’s never been clean before really, not since it was built. Cleanness isn’t something you associate with a furnace, is it?

I’d like to ask you what the area was like when you lived here? I think our office used to be some sort of laboratory, but the old furnace looks a bit like a windmill without its sails. In fact I used to think that’s what it was, until I came to work here and found out a bit about it.

How’s things in Brisbane at the moment? Mum said you’d been poorly for a while but were on the mend. I don’t know how or when but it would be great to come to visit you one day, especially when you become a great grandmother! It’s very expensive though. Are you still singing in that old ladies’ choir? Are you still in touch with any of the people here that you used to sing with? I was just telling my friend Eddie the other day about that concert you did at the Methodist Hall. I remember it was just after Grandad died, and you did that Julie London song, ‘Cry Me a River’. It was so beautiful.

The other thing that’s happened is Jackie got a job in Meadowhall – the big shopping centre I told you about. She’s not in a shop, she’s in the centre management there, things like helping the shop staff when they have problems with services and need to get contractors. She has to work some late nights, and she thinks she might have to give it up when she has the baby. But anyway, her boss there had a breakdown. His brother died at the Hillsborough disaster and he’s been in a terrible state ever since, so now Jackie’s only been there a couple of months and she’s running the whole team.

We’re going to go and meet Mum now, so I’ll say good bye. Please write back, and give our love to Bobbie.

Lots of love,

Dez xx