Millions of Britons want a fresh start and a new life. But they will find it at home, not in Australia

The Henwood family prepare to emigrate to Australia from Southampton docks, January 1955. Photograph: PA

In Chris Bush and Richard Hawley’s musical, Standing at the Sky’s Edge, there’s an exchange that has stuck in my mind. The scene is Sheffield’s Park Hill housing estate at Christmas 2002. The postwar estate was once a place of modernity, civic pride and hope, but it is now run down and decaying. There are rats in the flats.

Jimmy, a young security guard, and Joy, a nurse, still live in Park Hill. They talk constantly about finding a better future and a fresh start for themselves. But where could they go to do that, Joy asks? To Mars? “No,” Jimmy insists: “A proper fresh start. Clean slate. Australia.”