Residents of an aged care facility in Orange have received one of the last letters from the Queen sent only weeks before her death.
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Orange Grove Care Community general manager Margaret Irish said the letter was a reply to a message and photos that were sent to Queen Elizabeth in June congratulating her on her Platinum Jubilee.
"Some of them actually cried, some of them celebrated that they didn't get it from 'that King Charles', and then it was 'oh my gosh, we're one of the last people to get something," Ms Irish said of the residents' reaction to receiving the reply after the Queen's death.
"So the resident's then asked me to look after it safely and to get it framed.
"The Queen is very much beloved at the centre so there's been high teas to celebrate her 70 years and then high teas to celebrate her life and then the residents watched the whole funeral service, it was something that the residents were all watching, they didn't watch anything else.
"The Queen will be missed by the residents of Orange Grove."
Ms Irish said the celebrations for the Queen's Jubilee involved the creation of a cardboard replica of the Queen's carriage.
"The residents arranged for that to be attached to a wheelchair so everyone could get an experience of riding in a royal carriage and it was on display when we had our Queen's Jubilee celebrations and then we wrote a letter to the Queen congratulating her on her jubilee and sent her photos on what we'd done to celebrate her jubilee," Ms Irish said.
Ms Irish said the letter also shared with her some of the residents' memories of when she visited Orange in the past.
"Some of them remember from when they were wee little kids," she said.
"Then we were fortuitous enough, one of our people in home office had someone travelling to London so the letter was personally delivered to Buckingham Palace.
"When the Queen passed away there were many tears here."
However, Ms Irish said when the letter from the Queen arrived this week after the monarch's death she did not immediately notice the Royal Mail stamp or that it was any different to her regular correspondence.
"Earlier this week I had a team member pass me an envelope, which I thought was just another random piece of correspondence and I thought as the GM I'm getting 500-million envelopes and I thought, 'yeah, I'll open it'," Ms Irish said.
"She went, no Margaret, you don't understand, you need to look at this one and I went, 'yeah, I'll get to the mail', and she went, 'no, no, Margaret, you need to look at this one'.
"I'm still not getting it and she went, 'look at where it's come from' and it's come from the Queen."
Ms Irish said the correspondence included an envelope with the ER and the Crown, it was stamped as Buckingham Palace and dated August 19, 2022.
The Queen died on September 8.
The was not the first letter from the Queen to be sent to the centre.
Two of the residents are 100 and both of them had their celebrations earlier this year and got telegrams from the Queen.
One of the residents is turning 101 in October, so he has his already as well.
"One of the residents who is 100, his brother-in-law was the media attache for the Queen's visit in 1970 and when he got his telegram the family went into the wardrobe and pulled out an old satchel and put it in there and only then realised it had embossed in gold down the bottom, 'Royal visit of 1970'," Ms Irish said.
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Tanya Marschke
I am based at Orange and cover a wide range of subjects as well as the weekly business column. I've worked consistently in the the media industry since 2006 including the past seven years at the Central Western Daily. Before moving to Orange, I worked as a journalist at weekly newspapers the Beaudesert Times and the Gold Coast Sun in Queensland, as well as the Scone Advocate in the Hunter Valley. I started my career at the Ridge News in Lightning Ridge while I completed my journalism studies remotely at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst.
I am based at Orange and cover a wide range of subjects as well as the weekly business column. I've worked consistently in the the media industry since 2006 including the past seven years at the Central Western Daily. Before moving to Orange, I worked as a journalist at weekly newspapers the Beaudesert Times and the Gold Coast Sun in Queensland, as well as the Scone Advocate in the Hunter Valley. I started my career at the Ridge News in Lightning Ridge while I completed my journalism studies remotely at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst.
