AN immersive 360-degree film made right here in Cornwall is set to premiere this month at the prestigious Adelaide Fringe Festival in Australia.

The film ‘Letters from Australia’ is based on letters written home by two Cornish boys as they emigrated Down Under back in 1864.

On October 26, 1864, having travelled up from Sancreed, near Penzance, Thomas and William Osborne sat on the Barbican in Plymouth looking at the SS London, ready to sail to Melbourne.

It’s here that the scene is set for their journey and a new life in the southern hemisphere.

The letters have been handed down through four generations until Martin Eddy, their current custodian and two-times great grandson of John Charles Osborne, inherited them from his aunt.

They provide the inspiration, overarching visual motif and compelling lyrics of the production as their words lay bare their homesickness, loneliness and separation along with the everyday challenges and triumphs of their new life in an evolving nation.

Letters from Australia is set to premiere in Adelaide at the end of February
Letters from Australia is set to premiere in Adelaide at the end of February (Supplied)

With their mining, blacksmithing and farming skills to fall back on whilst bringing their culture and deep Cornish chapel faith with them, the film - which won Cornwall Film Festival’s ‘Best VR and Immersive Film’ - details the journey upon which they embarked.

And it’s based on those letters, that the whole production story begins. Difficult to read due to the cursive handwriting and practice of cross writing, Martin enlisted the help from his local village historians to help decipher the letters.

A conversion with creative designer Dave Hotchkiss then sparked the realisation that the letters could be the inspiration for an immersive film and so, aided by Nick Hart - who was brought in as songwriter/composer and also to develop the script - the film started to take shape.

“I hope that through our involvement with the Adelaide Fringe, we might discover our long-lost Cornish family and connect to the original Osbornes,” said Martin, who plans to travel with Dave Hotchkiss and Miles Sloman for the premiere on Friday, February 21.

“Over 160 years after they left home for Australia, my three-times great grandfather and his wife, Thomas and Ann Osborne, left for Australia in 1849 leaving behind their three children. Of those three children, one remained in Cornwall and two brothers, Thomas and William, followed in 1864. We have the letters, but no relatives!”