VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: picture of a dense forest viewed from…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: When I was a boy, my grandfather would tell me that the river always remembers. He would speak about her…
When I was a boy, my grandfather would tell me that the river always remembers. He would speak about her language, hoping one day I would understand her voice. My home, Jeparit, sat along her banks, in which always provided wonderous life to our local community. Her warm blue blood carried fish and brought new life to her skin, building luscious green plants, wherever she flowed. Trees stood tall, holding homes for animals that could climb to reach the branches. Her body twisted and coiled promoting a glimmering sparkle, representing hope and adventure to the newly born town.
Years have passed since my grandfather died, bringing the once prosperous town to the grave along with him. My grandfather created the town, making him the heart of the community. He was the person who brought everyone together. The loss of my grandfather forced the town into chaos. People left their unfinished homes, packing their belongings and leaving. Shops became abandoned, creating dark black buildings that voiced ghostly sounds. The streets had cracked and crumbled, resembling small stones and large potholes, that no one would want to drive on. My home, built along the bank of the river, was the highlight of the town. People came from far and wide just to see it and all its beauty. The last time I saw it; I was reminded that the river was what made my home shine. The house was nothing but rusted tin and remnants of a structure we used to live in. It had become overgrown with weeds and sand, no longer a home – a place reclaimed by nature from our lack of presence. The river had been reduced to dirt and clay, showing her open ribcage to the tough Australian sun. Her blood had run dry. No more did animals travel great distances to taste her love. No more did the vibrant green colour cover every inch of the town. Yellow and dust was all that remained. Her love had faded, along with ours.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: "...but its no use going back at…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: Finding My Way The diagnosis appeared without warning, slipping quietly into her life like a misplaced file in…
Finding My Way
The diagnosis appeared without warning, slipping quietly into her life like a misplaced file in the archives of her mind. She had been running that night, fit and healthy, and soon found herself sitting beneath the clinic cloaked in the sterile white glow that the word “early onset dementia” was spoken aloud, setting her on a degrading path from which there was no return. As the disease sharply wove its way through her brain, the threads of her past unravelled. Threads of memory loosening, familiar faces fading into a shadow. What remained was a mind collapsing in on itself, a dark world of thoughts racing in every direction with no one to calm them. The arrows on the road beneath her feet pointed her forward, but her heart still searched for the yesterdays she could no longer reach.
Eliza drifted through the ruins of her memory, the present slipping through gaps she could no longer bridge, the past pressing in like walls she could not scale. She would often wander the halls of the wretched nursing home, her eyes distant as if searching for a door back to her vibrant self. But her legs knew only one path, forward, towards someone she no longer recognised. Straight ahead into a different ending, a person forgotten and alone, struggling to even remember the colour of her socks she had on. In these moments, flashes of her former life would pierce the fog, the feel of a scalpel in her hand, the rush of adrenaline in the operating room, the warmth of gratitude in a patient’s eyes and the arrival of a new challenge that she could no longer conquer. These memories surfaced like rejected sutures, sharp edged fragments of a life her mind could no longer hold together.
Yet it was not only the dementia that broke down her dignity, but also the care or lack
thereof, she received within the walls of Silver Linings. Requests for help with basic
needs often went unanswered, her voice lost in the void between her mind and the
world around her. She would lie awake at night, the silence of her room interrupted
by the distant cry of others like her, each calling out for a compassion that never
came.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: title - listen , stimulus - mighty…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: Section B - base piece Listen @stirring the pot 27 January 2025 Good afternoon everyone! Its Abby. I know I…
Section B - base piece
Listen
@stirring the pot
27 January 2025
Good afternoon everyone! Its Abby. I know I usually start these posts with butter, or maybe basil, on the rare occasion a story about my grandmothers famous pavlova. However, this week, I cant quite bring myself to whisk egg whites when the air outside feels so heavy. Today is not a recipe for peach cobbler, but instead a recipe for disaster.
Yesterday, whilst chopping onions for dinner, I was unable to disregard the roars from my balcony, chants echoing through the city like the sound of a boiling kettle about to spill over. Thousands marching, thousands watching, some angry, some yearning, some like me, unsure how to stir whats inside without it burning. But sounds like this, rising like dough, it was impossible not to listen. So today I shy away from cooking to express to my followers the youth of Australia and the next generations leaders about how solicitous I am.
[insert picture from stimulus]
Listening isnt always gentle, it can sting, the same way lemon juice does when it hits a small cut. For years, I have associated the day of Australia day, January 26th with sizzling sausages and backyard laughter, now it tastes different. Smokier, Bitter. I reflect on those whos hands first lit fires here long before the barbecues, whos stories were silenced under layers of tradition where nobody can listen to them. It is not a day of pride, but a day of pain. To listen means to sit with that truth, even if its unsettling.
and understanding, where small acorns of awareness start to grow.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: title; listen stimulus; image of a…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: Listen 'Published posthumously, in memory of Aleesha Grace Thomas, Aged 26' This is not how I wanted to be…
Listen
'Published posthumously, in memory of Aleesha Grace Thomas,
Aged 26'
This is not how I wanted to be remembered.
If you're reading this, I've already become a headline. Another name in your newsfeed, another statistic. Another girl killed by the man who promised to love her. You've heard this story before. You've scrolled past it many times. But you've never heard it like this, never from me.
I am not just a story anymore. I am no longer a victim; I am the storyteller. I have a voice, and I refuse to let it drown beneath the noise of indifference. I know how this world works. It will only start listening now that I am gone. But my words will rise like water, filling every silence you've allowed to grow.
I write this for those still out there - the girls who paint over bruises and brush off insults as jokes. The ones who whisper apologies for things they never did, and whose voices are buried deep. The world will hear you all now, even if they must first be forced to listen.
But perhaps you've already heard us. Perhaps our cries have been echoing inside you for a long time now, like waves crashing against immovable rocks. You tell yourself it's not your place. You look away, convincing yourself that silence is safety. I know that silence well; it seeps into rooms like a tide, slow and cold, until it drowns everyone in reach.
You are not innocent just because you did not raise your fist. You are not innocent because you claim not to have known. Each time you look away, you feed the tide. Each time you say nothing, the water rises.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: ‘There’s no point in keeping those…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 65%: ‘There’s no point in keeping those memories alive.’ We Have Always Lived in the Castle suggests that some…
‘There’s no point in keeping those memories alive.’
We Have Always Lived in the Castle suggests that some things are best forgotten.
Do you agree?
Shirley Jackson’s 1962 gothic fiction novel, We Have Always Lived in The Castle, follows the secluded lives of the Blackwood Sisters in rural Mid-Century America. Through her novel, Jackson contends that, while some memories can be valuable, ultimately there are some things that are best forgotten. Throughout the piece, the author reinforces that forgetting certain events enables some to emancipate themselves in the form of isolation. Furthermore, Jackson highlights how forgetting memories may allow one to mentally remove themselves from the flaws of society and heighten their mental fortitude. However, the author indicates that while some things are better to be remembered and there are certain memories that may hold value to one’s being.
Jackson illustrates that forgetting can bring forth one's emancipation and ability to live as they wish through isolation from society. Towards the end of the novel, the Blackwood home is lit ablaze as the sisters watch the gothic trope of a mob mentality strike their home “as a wave”. In reaction to this event, Merricat is portrayed to wonder when they would be finished with their destruction so that they could “start to clean the house again”. Through this, Jackson fortifies the sisters’ ability to forget the devastation they face in order to seek freedom and liberation from through their isolation. This reaction of only seeking to clean after the fire, is further used by Jackson to indicate that Merricat isn’t concerned with events which may pose a threat to her, rather her character symbolises one's ability to live through forgetting unfavourable events in order to live with contentment. Moreover, Jackson reinforces this notion through her depiction of the sisters refusal to address the cause of their families deaths. After being aggravated by the actions of others, Merricat asserts that she will “put death in all their food and watch them die” to which Constance replies “like the way you did before”. This reveal of the cause of their families death is utilised by Jackson in an attempt to alert the audience that, as the sisters have not discussed the poisoning much, one trying to forget about disempowering information may in turn allow for emancipation. Thus, Jackson ultimately highlights how forgetting may reveal one's ability to live as they please and be liberated in the form of isolation.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: title; listen stimulus; image of a…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: Listen 'Published posthumously, in memory of Aleesha Grace Thomas, Aged 26' This is not how I wanted to be…
Listen
'Published posthumously, in memory of Aleesha Grace Thomas,
Aged 26'
This is not how I wanted to be remembered.
If you're reading this, I've already become a headline. Another name in your newsfeed, another statistic. Another girl killed by the man who promised to love her. You've heard this story before. You've scrolled past it many times. But you've never heard it like this, never from me.
I am not just a story anymore. I am no longer a victim; I am the storyteller. I have a voice, and I refuse to let it drown beneath the noise of indifference. I know how this world works. It will only start listening now that I am gone. But my words will rise like water, filling every silence you've allowed to grow.
I write this for those still out there - the girls who paint over bruises and brush off insults as jokes. The ones who whisper apologies for things they never did, and whose voices are buried deep. The world will hear you all now, even if they must first be forced to listen.
But perhaps you've already heard us. Perhaps our cries have been echoing inside you for a long time now, like waves crashing against immovable rocks. You tell yourself it's not your place. You look away, convincing yourself that silence is safety. I know that silence well; it seeps into rooms like a tide, slow and cold, until it drowns everyone in reach.
You are not innocent just because you did not raise your fist. You are not innocent because you claim not to have known. Each time you look away, you feed the tide. Each time you say nothing, the water rises.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Belonging
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 70%: It’s been a decade since I left my country of Greece, yet some mornings I wake up to the scent of Yiayia’s…
It’s been a decade since I left my country of Greece, yet some mornings I wake up to the scent of Yiayia’s pasta sauce drifting through the foggy Australian dawn as the magpies caw. I know it’s impossible, because our kitchen here only smells of instant coffee, but the air carries the scent I can’t forget. In that moment, Greece is not the place I left behind, it is the place that cradles my soul and carries me forward in times of sorrow.
My parents crossed oceans with nothing but an empty suitcase and one shoe, as if they had left one foot behind to anchor them to their homeland to make a better life for our family and to ensure we carry our culture with us. When they arrived, they found that Australia was a vast island of scorching heat and pouring rain. They planted their dreams like olive seeds in foreign soil, hoping that one day it would grow. The land seemed unwilling at first. It rejected our accents, our prayers and our way of life. Yet slowly it softened, as I rested my head on my pillow and as every warm night went past, the rejection softened more as the sound of the humid wind humming old Greek lullabies would grow louder through the just as old gum trees. Reminding me of home.
Now I am eighteen, and though I have lived here most of my life, my heart still beats in two languages. I have learnt to appreciate the taste of barbecues and lamingtons and experience the roughness of footy and the endurance of cricket, It was the roughness of footy that gave me my tough skin and the endurance of cricket that taught me resilience when I’d start to miss home. It was these experiences in Australia that molded my mind like gold from Ballarat.
As barbecues would smoke laughter would fill the air, but when I would laugh the sound would only echo down the marble corridors of memory. Where I’d find myself yearning for the sweetness of Galaktoboureko and the bitterness of sketo coffee. The friends I’ve made here are kind, but none of them understand how a soul could ache for a country the body no longer inhabits. From my birth Greece molded my heart like sculptures from the Acropolis.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Engage Stimulus 1: ‘There needs…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: Engage: An anthropological study into Australian education An independent case study conducted by The…
Engage: An anthropological study into Australian education
An independent case study conducted by The Australian Anthropological society into the lives of public-school students and the circumstances that inform their cultural behaviours in response to inequity.
1- Systems of oppression
2- Techniques of domination
3- Addressing the issue
4- Need to change
5- Diagnostic of the cycle
Systems of oppression
Systemic separations between class structures have been enabled by the inconsistent policies of state and federal government, unjustly persecuting groups cemented in poverty. The need to engage in an education system that traps students in poverty, beats down the value of their learning, forces them to continue in a state of unrest, and subdues the desire to improve their circumstances by degrading their worth has become evident throughout this study.
When observing the combative behaviour of public-school students, the notion of resistance replicates the historical observations of oppressed communities. Class inequality in Australia has been a persistent factor towards protests, with the stonemasons in 1856 engaging in the fight against the injustice of exploitation of their work with little reward, or the Freedom Rides persisting for a change in the Australian sentiment of acceptance of discrimination. Throughout the history of Australia there has always been a distinction between the those who have and those who have not. It can be seen now in the treatment of primarily public-school teachers who have been forced to participate in strikes in Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales, to make clear that the established mistreatment in classrooms and the poor conditions of public-education will not continue to be disregarded.
The historical mistreatment of those living in poverty has always manifested its way into the education system. The policies of the federal government have always been a cornerstone of revolts this is no more evident than the introduction of fees to Australian university in 1988. This shift in education structure made the goal of higher education increasingly inaccessible to those in public school; the Monash University protests throughout 1988 demonstrates the unrest felt at the time, that can be seen throughout our study and the combative nature of this monumental shift in access. It has always been those living in socio-economic positions of destitution, those in public education, those who are the minority that have historically suffered under the weight of inequality perpetrated by an injustice in public policy.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Framework: Protest Title: It's Time
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 60%: [Whispers] My children. My children. They want to inject them with this vile poison. Well... I will not let…
[Whispers]
My children. My children. They want to inject them with this vile poison. Well... I will not let them.
[Shouts].
Here the government is, mandating me to harm my children. How could I be expected to do so? This should not be a law - it should be a choice. My choice.
[Return to normal volume, pace hastens. Beat.]
Except all I hear is the ticking time bomb of my children's safety. How soon will it be until their safety - their bodies - are compromised? Why is this not their choice?
[Whispers].
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
[Return to normal volume.]
I see it everywhere. I hear it everywhere. I feel it everywhere. There has been a shift. We are not being pushed underground anymore, breaking through to the light of day. These other mothers try to stop me, but they cannot.
They fear me. Or... do they just fear what they do not know?
[Mocking tone].
You should just get the jab. The hubby and the kids all have it. It didn't hurt at all! Try it! You should really just try it.
[Chest heaving, return to normal voice and pace].
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: At what cost!
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 72.5%: At what cost! Today is January 4th 2025. On January 4th 1925 my great great grandmother was fighting for her…
At what cost!
Today is January 4th 2025. On January 4th 1925 my great great grandmother was fighting for her rights as a woman. It's January 4th. I am still fighting. It has been centuries of loss, disappointment and pain, yet nothing has changed. Anthony Albanese, you as Prime Minister have the authority to create a better future for more than half of the population of Australia. Multiple women within parliament are paid less than the males. This system is completely outdated and you have the power to change it. What cost is it to you? What do you lose? Enlighten us.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: protest title: at what cost stimulus:…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 75%: To my dearest Angel, by the time you find this letter the banners will be shown away collecting dust and the…
To my dearest Angel,
by the time you find this letter the banners will be shown away collecting dust and the chants that once echoed throughout the full streets of London will have faded away. My daughter, I write this to you now to understand, to fight, to never give up. If things still haven't changed, if us as women are still looked down on, fight back.
Today I stood in the inner heart of London among the suffragettes, widows, mothers, even some elders. And together we marched. March for our future, marched for our family, marched for the generations upon us. As I looked around signs surrounded me ones that read “rights for women” ones that portrayed “let us vote” daunting on the watchers before us. I watched as people, women, got shoved, told to back down, ignored like we are a mockery standing before them but no, no one stopped. The marching continued in unity, together hand in hand we shouted, screamed, begged for a shot, begged to be noticed for once. However, for this the consequences we received were shocking. Suffragettes were locked up against their will; they refused to eat until they were heard which led to the punishment of feeding tubes. Women were being knocked down, their banners being torched before their eyes. It was like we had entered our own World War, except this time the men weren't protecting the women and children, they were against them.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: title: listen stimulus: Image of a…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 82.5%: Section B writing about protest stimulus 2 Listen 'Published posthumously, in memory of Aleesha Grace Thomas,…
Section B writing about protest
stimulus 2
Listen
'Published posthumously, in memory of Aleesha Grace Thomas, Aged 26.'
This is not how I wanted to be remembered
If you're reading this, I've already become a headline. I've become a name in your newsfeed, a statistic. I am another unfortunate girl killed by the man who promised love her. I know you've heard this story before, but you've never heard it like this, never from me.
I am not just a story anymore. No longer am I a victim. I am the storyteller. I have a voice. And I refuse to not be heard. I will not be quiet. Or silent. Or complacent. I know how this world works; it waits until we're silent to finally start listening. My words will ring louder now then they ever did when I was alive. The world must listen now, even if it is far too late to save me.
So I write this for those still out there; those girls with bruises hidden behind makeup, insults whispered in their ear under the guise of care, jealousy disguised as concern. The world will be forced to hear you now.
But maybe they already do. Maybe, our cries have been echoing in their heads for years now, they just refuse to acknowledge them.
They refuse to see our pain.
They refuse to see our abusers for what they truly are.
They refuse to open their eyes to the truths right in front of them.
In their minds, no evidence will ever be enough. Not our bruises, and certainly not our testimonies. The systems in place will continue to protect the guilty, and crush the vulnerable.
People - women, girls - will continue to die. Their voices will be kept silent. When will it be enough for the rest of you to act?
Listen to me now. You are not innocent just because you did not throw the punch. You are not innocent just because you were unaware of what occurred behind closed doors.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: • You must use the title provided. •…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: Section B Keeping it fun The shadows danced around me as I lay silently in my bed, listening out for a crack or…
Section B Keeping it fun
The shadows danced around me as I lay silently in my bed, listening out for a crack or a thud or anything that was out of the ordinary. In fear, I hid under the covers leaving just the smallest of hole so I could still breath but not see the monster standing at my door. It lurked around me, twisting and morphing as my imagination addled and changed the terrifying features of the monster-thing. Its long sharp claws, scaley neck and crackly skin, it circled me like a predator and I was the prey hiding under my covers, trembling. The sun had gone down, and my imagination was no longer the fun child and wildspirited like it had been during the day, it was like it got tired of keeping it fun, and let the darkness take over. It put away the childish thoughts and brought out the petrifying ones, the ones that would keep me awake haunt me until dawn.
As a 12 year old girl I should have been having fun outside, dancing and playing with my brother but I was trapped inside my own head. As months past, the darkness of the night began to creep into the day and suddenly everywhere I went I was looking over my shoulder to check no monster was following me. I felt like I was constantly being watched by the real eyes of the monster that stood at my door, waiting to pounce.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Resist and Persist
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: Absolutely, LORD HARRISON. Here is a **refined adaptation of your text to align fully with the title “Resist…
Absolutely, LORD HARRISON. Here is a **refined adaptation of your text to align fully with the title “Resist and Persist,”** keeping the tone formal, symbolic, and metallurgically resonant, while emphasizing the duality of rebellion and repair:
---
# **Resist and Persist**
### *The Manual of Dissent*
**Foreword – To the New Apprentice**
Welcome to the Guild of Resistance.
You have chosen an ancient craft — equal parts rebellion and repair. Remember: dissent is not destruction; it is the hammer that reforges society before it rusts. Manuals before this one were forged in candlelight, hidden in coat linings, whispered across fences. Read them carefully, for protest survives only through those who remember its craft.
---
## **Section 1 – Tools of the Trade**
**Item 1: A Mirror.** To see the system reflected in yourself. Clean it often; corruption leaves fingerprints.
**Item 2: A Compass.** Calibrated by conscience, not convenience.
**Item 3: A Pen.** Sharp enough to cut through silence, gentle enough to sign beside another’s.
**Item 4: A Seed.** Keep it warm. Every act of kindness is future growth.
**Item 5: Earplugs.** To silence the chorus of “It’s just the way things are.”
**Item 6: A Spare Heart.** Because one will break.
Carry them lightly. Steel may rust; conviction does not.
*(Voice & Expression / Personal Protest / Hope & Perseverance)*
---
## **Section 2 – Locating the Fault Line**
Listen first. Systems hum before they fracture.
Seek where comfort outweighs compassion — there dissent begins.
Map the landscape: overcrowded wards, underpaid hands, silenced stories.
Write in margins what cannot fit in official reports. Bureaucracies fear margins; they hold truth too wide for forms.
Remember: obedience is often the first language of fear. Translate it into courage, word by word.
*(System & Society / Moral Conviction / Resistance & Defiance)*
---
## **Section 3 – Ignition Protocol**
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Make you proud
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: The sky was the colour of wet concrete when I opened my report. Around me, my friends’ laughter shimmered like…
The sky was the colour of wet concrete when I opened my report. Around me, my friends’ laughter shimmered like sunlight—grades full of A’s, A+’s, futures bright as midday. Mine: a column of red F’s. Their voices blurred into a chorus of mockery—idiot, dumbass—but I smiled anyway, stretching my lips into the sun I didn’t feel.
By the time my shoes touched the welcome mat, the sun had set inside me. My father was already waiting, eyes lit with a storm. The word disappointment struck harder than his fist ever could. He raged about wasted chances, about shame. I escaped to my room, where the only light was the streetlamp leaking through the blinds. It drew bars across my wall—like a cage of shadows.
Lying there, I thought of my mother. The warmth of her skin when I was three, the lullabies that smelled of soap and milk. She had left us, and since then, the world had dimmed. My father drowned in bottles; I drowned in silence.
When I woke again, hunger twisted through me. I stumbled to the kitchen—and froze. My father lay sprawled on the floor, face ghost-pale under the fluorescent light. For a second, the world stopped breathing. His hand, once so heavy on my shoulder, was still.
At the hospital, the rhythmic beep of machines mimicked my heartbeat—fast, frantic. I waited through the night, watching dawn smear pink across the window. The doctor’s shoes echoed down the corridor. “Are you Lucas?” he asked. My legs carried me into the room before my mind could follow.
Dad looked smaller than I remembered. His voice cracked through the static: “I’m sorry, son… for everything.” His eyes—once fiery—were now pools of regret. “Do good in life. Make me proud.”
The words sank into me like sunlight into frost. When the monitor fell silent, the room dimmed again—but something inside me had caught light.
After the funeral, I promised him I’d change. No more excuses. No more shadows.
Child services placed me with strangers who called me troubled. Every door closed as soon as it opened. I ran away, juggling three jobs—mopping diner floors, stacking shelves, washing cars—anything to survive. My apartment was barely more than a box, with one flickering bulb that hummed through the night. Yet every morning I looked in the cracked mirror and whispered, Make him proud.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: title: in bloom stimulus 1: “Whoever…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 95%: I can still hear it—the puck thudding into the boards, the horn splitting the air, skates carving white…
I can still hear it—the puck thudding into the boards, the horn splitting the air, skates carving white shavings that catch the light. Those sounds don’t fade; they settle under the skin and rise the moment I step inside a rink.
Our local rink isn’t much. Breath lifts in white ribbons. There’s a hush before the first stride, the kind of quiet that makes the smallest scrape sound huge. It’s a concrete box on the edge of town, but it felt like home. I trained here every week for as long as I can remember: team meetings in the change room, coach’s talks on the bench, tape snapping off a roll, laughter fogging the glass.
When he wasn’t working, Dad stood behind the glass in sweatpants and his old NHL hoodie. He didn’t shout; he watched. If I missed, he gave a small nod—not disappointment, just a quiet way of saying try again, keep going, you’re close. It told me effort counted even when the scoreboard didn’t.
Before he was my dad in a frayed hoodie, he was a name on draft sheets—a big prospect with speed and a heavy shot. In his last varsity game, he tore his ACL. One twist and the future he’d skated toward vanished. He never called it failure or let it turn him hard. When doubt tightened in my chest, he’d say, “You’re in bloom. You might not be the best now, but persistence opens paths. It’s uphill from here—in the right way.” He rarely lectured; he showed me how to stay steady when things got hard.
Year 10 was harsh. I learned the weight of the bench. I stared at the rubber matting more than I saw the ice. When the coach finally tapped my shoulder, the puck felt foreign on my blade. I shuffled the pass away and hid in the flow. At school, the looks—half question, half pity—pressed the doubt deeper.
Mum and Dad wouldn’t let those thoughts root. “Whoever wants to understand much must play much,” Mum reminded me, tapping the fridge magnet with that line. Learning lives in the doing. Her words pulled up an old picture of me at six in a paper chef’s hat, waving a wooden spoon, a frypan too heavy for my wrist. I wasn’t cooking; I was playing at cooking—and
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Overpower Stimulus: Once when a…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 75%: They gathered before sunrise. A slow wave of bodies spilling into the plaza. From my desk on the fifteenth…
They gathered before sunrise. A slow wave of bodies spilling into the plaza.
From my desk on the fifteenth floor, I watched as the glass warped them into one big shape of light and movement. One that was here to say, we will not be overpowered.
The office lights came on behind me. Another day. Another crisis to ignore.
This was the problem with working for one of the biggest uranium mining companies in the nation.
An email from management pulsed across my screen: Disruption expected. Remain calm. Do not engage.
But I couldn’t stop watching.
Below, faces tilted upward. Even from here, I could sense their breath turning white in the early air. Their signs blurred in the distance, but their rhythm – the rise and fall of voices, the trembling of something unstoppable – carried itself upward like heat.
By mid-morning, the building locked its doors. The glass thickened the world into silence. Through it, I saw a woman place her palm against the entryway – not striking, or shouting, just pressing, as though wishing the wall would soften.
Her expression was calm - almost kind.
For a second, I mirrored her movement, and with my hand against the pane, felt a warm chill run through it.
I stepped back quickly. No one noticed. My colleagues stayed glued to their screens, expressions vacant.
Behind me, my supervisor’s voice cut through:
‘Once when a mother
Was asked would she send
Her darling boy to fight,
She just answered -- "No";
And I think you'll admit she was right.’
‘Those protestors outside, are the ones who chose to fight. We didn’t. Look how far it got them, and how far it got us. I think you can admit, we made the right decision.’
He noted, whilst lodging my shoulder with a firm pat.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Finding my way
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: Finding My Way The smell of coriander clings to my hands as I eat quietly in the school bathroom. The tiles…
Finding My Way
The smell of coriander clings to my hands as I eat quietly in the school bathroom. The tiles are cold, the air sharp with disinfectant, but the warmth of the bánh mì seeps through the foil — a small rebellion against invisibility. I tell myself I’ll wash the scent away before class, that no one will know. Yet the smell always lingers, stubborn as memory.
Sometimes I dream of rivers. Wide and brown, heavy with silt, carrying secrets toward the sea. In those dreams, my grandmother’s voice hums above the current: Nước không quên nguồn — water does not forget its beginning. I wake with the taste of salt and mud in my mouth, unsure if it’s from Vietnam or the tears I didn’t realise I’d shed.
When I was seven, we left the banks of the Mekong for a sky made of silver and flight paths. “Qua sông để đổi đời,” my mother whispered — cross the river to change your life. I clutched her hand as the plane rose through the clouds, thinking we were ascending into a future where everything would shine. But in Australia, the light was too bright, the words too heavy.
At primary school, my English was a fragile bridge. Thank you became tenk you, school became skoo. The laughter that followed wasn’t cruel — just effortless. I learned the quiet art of shrinking. My Vietnamese words — má, cơm, nước mắm — became small coins I buried deep, afraid they’d mark me as counterfeit.
Once, my teacher asked us to draw “where we came from.” I filled the page with lotus ponds — green circles of calm holding pink blooms afloat. She called them “water lilies,” smiling proudly as she pinned my work to the wall. I nodded, but something
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: ART OF BECOMING
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: The Art of Becoming My mother’s expectations were stitched into me long before I understood what expectations…
The Art of Becoming
My mother’s expectations were stitched into me long before I understood what expectations were. She moved through the world with a certainty I admired and feared in equal measure. Her voice shaped my reflection. Her pride was the mirror I measured myself against. And so I tried to become her idea of a good daughter — quiet, obedient, already written before I learned how to hold a pen.
At ten years old, she placed a hijab in my hands. It was soft, a delicate shade of blue. She called it my protection. My dignity. My responsibility. She said it with a gentleness that didn’t match the firmness in her eyes. I didn’t yet understand the language of silence — the way love can hide in expectation, the way fear can masquerade as care.
At first, I wore it the way I brushed my teeth — a habit, unexamined. Fabric looped and pinned with practiced fingers, the routine so familiar it required no thought. I saw women wearing it with confidence and grace, moving through the world like artwork — strength inked into cloth. I envied that beauty. But beauty means little when you aren’t allowed to seek it yourself.
The problem was never the hijab.
It was that I hadn’t chosen it.
Each morning, my reflection felt slightly less like mine. The girl in the mirror smiled the way she was taught to. She never asked questions. She never faltered. She performed faith as though it were choreography she hadn’t rehearsed — memorising steps she didn’t yet understand. When something sacred becomes routine without meaning, its weight shifts. It becomes a testament to obedience, not love.
There were moments — quiet, fleeting — where doubt pricked at the edge of my thoughts. Was it wrong to want space? Was it disrespectful to not feel what my mother felt? I swallowed those questions before they fully formed. If faith was a story, I told myself I had no right to edit the lines.
But pressure doesn’t disappear when ignored. It accumulates — like air too tight inside the lungs.
The day I took it off, there was no shouting. No slammed doors. Just my own unsteady breath fogging up a mirror. I traced a finger through the condensation,
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: an education in play
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: OVERLAND Overland literary journal > Latest > Education 28/10/25 Open letter addressed to The Hon Jason Clare…
OVERLAND
Overland literary journal > Latest > Education
28/10/25
Open letter addressed to The Hon Jason Clare MP Minister for Education from Plenty Valley Christian College Principal Amelia Bartoli, VIC
MP Jason Clare must continue to fund and support initiatives that prioritise play.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Finding my way
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 75%: Finding My Way When I was seven, my mother told me we were crossing a river. Not the Mekong — though she said…
Finding My Way
When I was seven, my mother told me we were crossing a river. Not the Mekong — though she said it with the same reverence — but one made of sky and saltwater, stretching between Vietnam and a place called Australia. I imagined a wooden boat drifting endlessly through clouds, our suitcases balanced like small offerings. “Qua sông để đổi đời,” she whispered — cross the river to change your life. I didn’t yet understand that change could mean leaving behind more than you could carry.
At first, everything about Australia felt too large: the streets, the words, the silence between people. In Vietnam, the air was always busy — motorbikes humming, vendors calling, the smell of grilled corn curling through alleys. Here, the air was still, as if it were waiting for me to say something I didn’t yet know how to. I learned quickly that silence was safer than being wrong.
At primary school, my tongue tripped on English vowels. Thank you became tenk you, and school sounded like skoo. The other children laughed softly, not cruelly but carelessly, like laughter had no weight. I shrank into myself. My Vietnamese words — má, cơm, nước mắm — became secrets I kept in my mouth. They tasted of home but carried the risk of difference.
My teacher, Mrs. Avery, once asked me to share a story from “where I came from.” I drew a picture of the lotus ponds near my grandmother’s house — wide green circles holding pale pink flowers. She smiled and pinned it to the wall, but when she called it a “water lily,” something inside me folded. It wasn’t her fault. But in that moment, I realised that even beauty could be lost in translation.
By the time I reached high school, I thought I had mastered the current. My English flowed more smoothly; my Vietnamese, less so. I stopped bringing bánh mì for lunch and bought meat pies instead. My mother still packed them for me sometimes, wrapped carefully in foil, as though warmth could cross oceans of shame. I’d eat them in the bathroom, the smell of
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Speak Up Stimulus: “You don’t need a…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 92.5%: There is a kind of fog that creeps into a room after a cruel joke is told. It settles softly, coating every…
There is a kind of fog that creeps into a room after a cruel joke is told. It settles softly, coating every surface with discomfort. People shift in their seats, laugh awkwardly, and then say nothing. That silence, thin at first, then suffocating, lingers long after the joke has passed. It is in that silence that injustice takes root. I have seen that fog before. It does not arrive with violence or outrage. It drifts in quietly, disguising itself as politeness or restraint. It spreads through classrooms, offices, train carriages, and family dinners. It wraps itself around the moments when we know something is wrong but convince ourselves it is not our place to intervene. It whispers that it is easier to stay quiet. But silence is not neutral. Silence is the soil in which discrimination grows. We like to imagine that racism and prejudice are rare and dramatic, things confined to history books or extremist groups. Yet most of it hides beneath the surface, subtle but steady. It is in the name that is mispronounced without apology, the assumptions made before a word is spoken, the tone that changes when a certain skin tone enters the room. It is the young girl who is told she is too loud for speaking with passion, the boy followed in a store, the student who is asked, “Where are you really from?” These small moments, dismissed as insignificant, accumulate. Together, they form the quiet architecture of discrimination. And yet, in those moments, most of us do nothing. We tell ourselves that we are not part of the problem, that silence is a kind of peace. But peace built on silence is fragile. It protects comfort, not justice. We look away not because we agree with the wrong, but because confrontation feels risky. We fear being judged, misunderstood, or alone. The fog grows thicker. It is easier to believe that one person cannot make a difference, that real change requires movements, leaders, or crowds. But every movement begins the same way, with one person who decides that silence will no longer suffice. A spark is small, almost invisible, yet it can burn through an entire fog. Courage does not always appear in grand gestures or speeches. Sometimes it looks like quiet defiance, the decision to say, “That is not okay,” when others stay silent. It can be a conversation after class, a correction spoken calmly but firmly, a refusal to laugh at a joke that harms.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: NO STIMULUS OF PROMPT JUST A TEMPLATE
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: Growing up, I had always wondered if he was my real brother. A nine-year age gap and a different father…
Growing up, I had always wondered if he was my real brother. A nine-year age gap and a different father figure forced a naive mind to question whether he was more than just a stranger to me. With a toxic persona, he never failed to play the villain in my young life. As I flew around the lounge room, fist in the air, a faded blue bedsheet tied around my neck as a makeshift cape, he would find joy and happiness in tearing it off my back. I’d grown up becoming accustomed to that resentment—the fierce, predatory look in his eyes as he cursed and hurled abuse at me, his ten-year-old brother. He not only lacked the qualities of a caring person but the qualities of simply being a role model, a role model his little brother needed.
Life was never easy for Blake and me; this was clearest in my older brother Blake’s journey into parenthood. At twenty-one, fatherhood struck him with a force he wasn’t ready to bear, bringing challenges he never imagined facing so soon. As little Oliver his son was born, severe illness kept him in the Royal Children’s Hospital for months. From the bright, beaming lights that never seemed to switch off, to the vibrant colours of the walls and the unforgettable stench of antiseptic, the hospital felt like a prison. Watching from afar, emotion flooding my body, I felt trapped. As my chest tightened and my hands trembled, I’d watch Blake’s anger lash out at nurses and doctors, fuelled by frustration, just like those times he’d ripped the bedsheet ruthlessly from off my shoulders. I recognised those victims of his outbursts and empathised with them, yet that empathy extended to Blake too. Surrounded by constant monitors and endless alarms, he had to be strong not only for himself but for his little boy who was fighting his own battles. Like a villain formed by hardship, he was lost, until he began to realise that his path was being reshaped by the people who loved him the most.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Resist and persist. Stimulus 1:…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 75%: Submission to the parliamentary committee about digital responsibility and data ethics. Submission: Sarah…
Submission to the parliamentary committee about digital responsibility and data ethics.
Submission: Sarah Wynn-Williams
Date: 26/10/25