Two brothers stand on Plymouth’s Barbican filled with anticipation of the journey ahead. They have travelled from Zennor in West Cornwall to Plymouth, the furthest they had ever travelled at the time, and now on the Plymouth pier, stood looking at the SS London, their transport to Melbourne Australia and the adventures to unfold.
Over the following years there arrived home a series of letters from the brothers and their father describing their experiences and emotional trauma of separation and hardship.

The letters are difficult to translate, not only due to the elaborate, cursive handwriting of the time, but also their use of ‘cross writing’ to make the best use of expensive paper and cost of postage in the 19th century.