VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Differences in play.
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 82.5%: Title: Differences in play. Good evening ladies and gentleman, players and coaches, officials and fans and…
Title: Differences in play.
Good evening ladies and gentleman, players and coaches, officials and fans and particularly all those joining us from around the country. It is my sincere pleasure to stand before you today, as commissioner of the Australian football league, to celebrate our prestigious Brownlow medal evening. *pause*
As we recount the wonderful season it has been, I ask you to consider the Differences in play we see all around the league. whether teams game plans, players unique playstyles or even the variety of fanbases we see. These Differences are what shape the backbone of our great league, allowing it to blossom. In similar fashion Differences are what shape Australia, not one person in this room today let alone the entire country is exactly the same. Contrast is what allows us to truly value uniqueness. Tonights awards provides us an opportunity to celebrate an individuals Differences, for what has led them to win a Brownlow medal is not trying to play the same as others, instead we celebrate their success in Difference in play. If all 46 players, 23 from each team, were to run out onto the field and play the game as we love it would not be the same. *pause* and *applause*
Whilst receiving the Brownlow medal tonight is a prestigious honour, a similar message I have heard over the years from winners is
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Should AI companies restrict the…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 65%: Imagine you wake up one day to find a humiliating video of yourself surfing through group chats and social…
Imagine you wake up one day to find a humiliating video of yourself surfing through group chats and social media. This video looks and sounds real and spreads like wildfire, but in reality, the video is fake. It looks so real that you yourself cannot disprove it. Emotions build up within you, and you fear how you will even show your face in public anymore. This is not science-fiction, it is a glimpse of the risks we face as artificial intelligence becomes more powerful and accessible.
AI is a revolutionary accomplishment in our progression of technology. Implementing AI has led to innovation in the medical, engineering as well as public administration fields. When used suitably with an intention to better society, it has been one of the greatest tools humanity has ever developed, but when found in the wrong hands, AI can be an instrument of corruption and mayhem
This poses the question, should everyone have the same access to AI?
Good morning/afternoon fellow government advisers and industry regulators. I stand before you in hopes to create a sense of urgency regarding the issue of wrongfully using AI in society. Recently artificial intelligence has shown to be more problematic than positive. We have witnessed AI being misused for identity theft, extortion, exploitation and other crimes. These topics require serious attention from policy makers and enforcers. We should push for regulations that require AI companies to limit public access to advanced features, while allowing qualified researchers and scientists full access for legitimate innovation.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: title: Resist and Persist stimulus:…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: Resist and Persist 18/03/2007 To: leesha.Stevens@email.com From: Gabby_Short123@email.com RE: Resist and…
Resist and Persist
18/03/2007
To: leesha.Stevens@email.com
From: Gabby_Short123@email.com
RE: Resist and Persist
Hi Leesha,
You may not remember me, but I sure remember you.
We grew up together in Nazareth House children’s home, a place I’ve spent 40 years trying to forget, as I’m sure you have too.
Why I am writing to you today is not to re-provoke the pain we suffered together, but to instead ask you to help us deal with the pain together.
Growing up in state care we endured through injustices no child should ever have o experience.
Persisting through the nuns beating us during potty training,
Persisting through having our heads slammed against the wall for speaking when not spoken to,
Persisting through being starved and locked in a cupboard for stepping out of line,
Persisting through being forced to work in laundries,
Persisting through being stolen from our families.
For me this led to a lifetime of shame and guilt that has left an unbearable weight hanging over me. For decades I believed that I was responsible for what happened to me, what happened to us. Like I deserved to be punished for a crime I had forgotten I committed. It is only now in my 60s that I am finally looking back and accepting it was never our fault.
I searched and searched to find a way to contact you because I needed to make sure you too don’t continue dealing with the pain of our experiences in Nazareth House alone like I did.
Once I retired last year, I started looking into what happened in those orphanages. Looking to find others who experienced what we went through, looking for proof that I’m not crazy and others unfortunately shared our horrific experience.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: 'At what cost'
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 65%: ' At what cost ' I still remember waking up that morning, half-asleep, grabbing my phone as usual, but as I…
' At what cost '
I still remember waking up that morning, half-asleep, grabbing my phone as usual, but as I flicked through my feed I didn’t see game stats nor results, rather abuse. Abuse targeted at me, my teammates and even family. Slurs. Monkey emojis. Just pure hate. In that moment I learned what change can cost. The cost of staying silent, the cost of standing out. I felt a sense of shame and embarrassment wash over my face, until I saw an image. The image showed someone graffitiing the wall, but through a different perspective I saw the sun shining in the background, it symbolized hope to me, because if I was knocked down yesterday why not stand up today.
Dear Football Fans,
This is not a post. It’s a protest.
I wanted to reach out for some time now as a player and a person with a message that is close to my heart. Over the years I’ve been playing football, I’ve come to realize that the demand for change exists everywhere, not just on the field, change is needed everywhere. If we do not fight for change we are just maintaining the status quo. The truth is change comes at a cost, if we don't fight for it we pay a price, a different kind of price - the cost of silence.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Finding my Way
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: 7th July 2024 I bought a plant the day he left. It wasn’t planned, I just couldn’t walk home empty-handed. The…
7th July 2024
I bought a plant the day he left. It wasn’t planned, I just couldn’t walk home empty-handed. The florist said it was a devil’s ivy, “hard to kill,” she joked. I remember wishing the same could be said about me. I placed it on the kitchen windowsill, watered it once, and forgot about it.
The days after blurred into sameness. A cold coffee, unread messages, the hum of silence where laughter used to live. The plant began to droop, its leaves curling inward. I knew it needed sunlight, but I couldn’t bring myself to open the curtains. The room stayed dim; so did I.
19th August 2024
Mum called. She asked if I was okay. I told her I was fine, though the word felt heavy. After she hung up, I saw the plant again, one leaf still stubbornly green. Somehow, that tiny defiance unsettled me. I opened the curtains for the first time in weeks. Light flooded the kitchen, touching everything I’d left to fade.
I poured a little water into the pot. The soil drank greedily. I wish healing worked like that, one drink, and you bloom again.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Personal journeys
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 82.5%: Good evening everyone, teachers, families, and the class of 2025. As we take this day to celebrate the…
Good evening everyone, teachers, families, and the class of 2025.
As we take this day to celebrate the overarching achievements of my fellow graduates, I want to take a step back. 5 years ago was the start of something new and exciting. A new year with new opportunities became a place I could learn and be involved with a population of people that I can now proudly call my family. At the start of high school, we were handed a spark. Small, yet there was room for growth into a larger flame. I want to reflect on the small light we had started out with and how the class of 2025 will carry a new level of brightness towards our future. It was not only our perseverance that got us through, but the unique way we were able to handle change, hand in hand. We had fought and lived through moments beyond academics, pushing through exhausting camps and competitive sports events that was not our usual. So, let me commend the battles that have brought us to where we stand today. A limelight to the courageous efforts we have put throughout these incredible 5 years.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: playing my part Stimulus…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 95%: They say the world is a stage, but no one ever tells you what to do when the leading man exits mid-scene. I…
They say the world is a stage, but no one ever tells you what to do when the leading man exits mid-scene.
I remember the smell of chalk and sweat that clung to me after gymnastics training. The way the fluorescent lights hummed above as I grabbed my bag from the lockers. He was supposed to pick me up, like he always did. Our routine was unremarkable, sacred even. He would pull up in the battered kia carnival, radio humming softly, and say “How was practice, champ?”I would roll my eyes pretending I was too old for nicknames, though I secretly waited for it every time.
But that day the car never came.
The lilies at the front of the church were too bright, their scent lingered in the air, cloying, almost theatrical, as if the world itself had prepared the stage. The coffin sat beneath the stained glass windows, the light falling across it in fractured colours. I stood behind the podium, hands cold against the paper I knew I wouldn't need to read.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Play our way
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 75%: The following is a transcript from one of our youth speakers, Phoebe Harford from ‘plenty voices’ event held…
The following is a transcript from one of our youth speakers, Phoebe Harford from ‘plenty voices’ event held last weekend. You can view phoebe talk online here. Phoebe speaks about her experiences of beginning high school during the covid-19 lockdowns.
I still remember the day the first lockdown was called. I was at my sister’s primary school fair, playing with my now year seven friends causing mischief. Our mums were working together on the sausage sizzle, and when we returned to them that’s when they broke the news – a statewide lockdown beginning at 11:59pm. I was twelve so the implications didn’t fully hit me as I thought it would only be at most a week in quarantine – not knowing that it would be for two years. I did know though that my basketball game that night in Geelong was cancelled. I did know that my play date with my friend Tobey the next day was cancelled. It felt personal. What were we going to do? How were we going to play? It what ways were we going to play?
Before covid, we were free to play our way. We were free to play however we liked. For some of us kids, that didn’t dramatically alter. I still have friends that spent the whole of 2020-2021 in a field in Minecraft barely leaving their bedrooms, and when we were free to leave our homes they barely even looked up. But for most of us, the way we played was under threat. We were forced to play in our fantasy rather than in reality. For us kids who loved competitive sport and hanging out with our friends in the real world, the lockdowns were a challenge like nothing that we had every experienced before – for our parents as well. Our parents at the same age and time in their life were able to play their own way, a way that they wanted to. However, for us, we had to adapt and play a different way. The implications of this are now only being uncovered and are unsurprisingly significant.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: At What Cost (Stimulus: “If not…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: Good morning, If not now, when? For years that question has echoed through the halls of power, across…
Good morning,
If not now, when? For years that question has echoed through the halls of power, across classrooms, and inside the minds of those who can already feel the air shifting. We have measured, modelled and debated, but we have not truly acted. Climate change is no longer a prediction—it is a present reality. Fires devour our summers, floods erase our towns, and the air we breathe carries the smoke of our own hesitation. The planet has been sending us warnings in every language it knows: in cracked soil, in silent forests, in coral turned ghost-white. Yet we keep answering with delay.
At what cost do we keep postponing responsibility? We tell ourselves progress takes time, yet time is the one thing we no longer own. Every fraction of a degree is a sentence written against the most vulnerable: island nations watching their shorelines vanish, farmers watching skies that no longer rain, children learning to fear the future they are meant to inherit. The science is not uncertain. The only uncertainty left is how much loss we are willing to accept before we decide that enough is enough.
For too long, we have mistaken comfort for safety. Convenience has become our quiet addiction. We cling to it as seas rise and species fall. But comfort cannot shield us from consequence. Each time we choose ease over effort, we push the planet a little further toward the edge. Every plastic bottle, every short flight, every moment we turn away from the evidence—we are signing a slow contract with disaster. The longer we protect our habits, the higher the price our children will pay. They will inherit an atmosphere thick with excuses, a planet heavy with regret.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Personal Journey - finding my way.
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: Finding My Way This time, the sound of the whistle to hear the coaches final words wasn't welcoming. Normally,…
Finding My Way
This time, the sound of the whistle to hear the coaches final words wasn't welcoming. Normally, after a training session for soccer I was ready to allow my body to relax again; to give it a reward for its strength and ability to improve my status in the team and feel healthy. Yet, this time the whistle acted like a lightning bolt through my body. Simultaneously the sound of the whistle and my body breaking down forced me to the ground. I had no control. The dampness of the grass and the freezing cold air were no match for the pain that engulfed my body. All I could manage was a primal scream. I knew I needed assistance immediately. I knew that the bright pitch lights would be shepherding me off the pitch rather than lighting the way back to the coach for one last pep talk.
The cliché that you don't know what you have until its gone is one that hits home the hardest. Who would have thought that my knee could in fact become the villain of my story. It seemed like any other day up until the point when my happiness was stripped from me. I struggled to draw breath, and the fast pace of my heart made me feel as if I were about to explode. I knew it was bad, but until I managed to take off my tight soccer sock I still had some hope, like blowing up a red balloon my knee expanded as the sock no longer held back the swelling. The MRI results reported the worst news - my ACL and meniscus were torn badly. I knew I needed to find my way and not allow my devastation to inhibit my transformation.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Carrying Country Stimulus: ‘I…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 65%: My heart beats as the sun ascends the sky, casting a glow that illuminates my charcoal plumage, bringing a new…
My heart beats as the sun ascends the sky, casting a glow that illuminates my charcoal plumage, bringing a new day forward. It was peaceful, new rhythmic songs being sung across the land by my own. As they soar the endless skys in flocks, I stand my ground on the land I once called home. My parents nested me until I could hunt and fight on my own.
I raise my wings high and mighty, ready to ascend through the winds, over the land, searching for a place I may call home. The sun coats the earth below, and the water glistens under it, welcoming me across the river that descends through the soil, a silver ribbon that stitches the land together.
As I soar, the air hums with memory. The wind carries whispers of the ones who came before, their stories tangled within the branches, intertwined together, woven into the blades of grass that sway beneath me. I sense them not as echoes of the past, but as presence, as heartbeat. They remind me that the journey forward often begins by looking back from the start.
I had longed to explore, to find home, to find myself. Yet as I drift over the land, I begin to feel that home is not a single place waiting to be found, but a rhythm, a pulse that beats beneath my own.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Patterns of the place
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: Chapter 3: What makes me….me? In 1972, almost 10,000 children were adopted in Australia. In 1978, around 4000…
Chapter 3: What makes me….me?
In 1972, almost 10,000 children were adopted in Australia. In 1978, around 4000 children were adopted in New Zealand. My parents are a part of these statistics. I have patterns of my place throughout my characteristics, but I do not know where my place is.
My mum’s patterns include her blonde hair and blue eyes. She has a fair complexion and almond shaped eyes that squint when she smiles. My dad’s patterns include his curly black hair and chestnut coloured eyes. He has a darker complexion. My place is based on assumptions from our patterns.
As I walk through the hallways of my home I see pictures of family members celebrating birthdays, debutantes and Christmas’. These are the family members that I know and love but they do not share the same patterns. I think about how those who do share the same patterns could have fought in world wars or competed in the Olympics. I try to remember them and where their patterns originated from but I can’t. I have no idea.
In primary school we had a project where we researched the heritage of our patterns and cooked a meal from that country. I sat there clueless because I didn’t know what to do. No country comes to mind when I picture the patterns of my ancestors. After much thought I eventually decided on Mexico because my favourite food was enchiladas. I picture a map of the world with patterns running through Mexico. Maybe my ancestors are Mexican and that's why I loved their food so much. Or maybe I was just coming up with an answer so I had something to say to that dreaded question, a feeling that no young child should ever have to experience.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: ‘Every voice matters’ Stimulus…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 70%: The sun was shining, it was a perfectly normal day. To the normal eye. But there was something off about the…
The sun was shining, it was a perfectly normal day. To the normal eye. But there was something off about the way the sun gleamed, the trees swayed. Something almost artificial. Like it was curated to perfection, a scene out of a movie. I know I know nothing is perfect. But what if I told you the government got rid of flaws, creating world that featured no violence or hate. Definitely a movie, right? It took me a while to notice what was happening but once you see it, it becomes even more obvious. You’d think the constant robot surveillance and the identical streets and houses would give it away. Turns out it doesn’t.
The government has everyone wrapped around their fingers, controlling their every move. Some would say it’s nice that there is no violence. Some would say conflict can help shape you as a person and society. It is unknown what the government do to you if they get suspicious of you. There are rumours they make you disappear, erasing you from everyone’s minds and pictures. Ethical? No. Good for them? Yes. Is this seriously what the world has come too. I used to love the perfect routine of my day, but it had always felt off. It never felt right to me.
I stumbled upon a group called the Hackers, they have been planning a rebellion for years. Collecting evidence using old fashioned methods and spreading the word using invisible messages. No one wants to speak out yet they are waiting for enough people to figure it out and see their messages.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: choosing sides
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: Section B: Choosing sides The Conversation By Kiera Maine, Lecturer in Public Health at Monash University,…
Section B: Choosing sides
The Conversation
By Kiera Maine, Lecturer in Public Health at Monash University, Melbourne
There is a quiet suffering that stains the hospital corridors - a pressing healthcare malaise that women have been told to endure, rather than dismantle. Our pain is minimised, our bodies mistranslated, and our silence mistaken for consent. There is no such thing as choosing sides, nor being neutral, to care for human life is to advocate for the injustices of womens health.
Progress for women has never come easy. Though we've fought for generations for parity, progress in the medical sphere remains structurally inert. It is therefore imperative that we continue to fight for adequate research and funding when it comes to healthcare, and the issues that uniquely affect our bodies. We as women must come together to battle the war of medical indifference, there are no sides to our suffering, and our only choice is to fight.
We are living in a world where women's bodies remain battlegrounds. The Pill was introduced in the 1960's, granting women agency over their reproduction. Yet in 2022, Roe V. Wade was overturned, stripping millions of women their right to choose what to do with their own bodies. This decision symbolises defeat; a brutal, back-lit severance for women in the war for bodily autonomy.
To live better lives, we must not question womes suffering, nor can we choose who we do and don't stand by. The consequential success of the courageous woman who struggled before us didn't act alone, nor did they choose sides, but fought as a unit for justice.
Prominent figures like Emmeline Pankhurst and particularly, Vida Goldstein, championed not only women's suffrage, but sparked further equality beyond the ballot bar. Goldstein stood for independence, moral courage, and conviction that protest is not only a right, but a responsibility - after all, neutrality didn't exist back then. She was a beacon for change, an embodiment of rebellion, persistence and struggle.
Civil resistance became the inherited code of conduct for women, a template of persistence needed to dismantle the gatekeepers of power.
Crucially, this legacy of struggle is not merely a historical footnote. Today, our war for autonomy has shifted from the ballot box to the clinic, and our adversaries are no longer just politicians, but the institutions of corporate indifference.
Yet, despite this monumental success and progression... feminism is at a perilous inflection point.
The medical sphere remains in medieval times.
The very militant conviction that delivered the vote has softened.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: ‘Faggot.’ ‘Freak.’ The words still…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: ‘Faggot.’ ‘Freak.’ The words still echo from my last post, carved into the comment section like scars — a…
‘Faggot.’ ‘Freak.’
The words still echo from my last post, carved into the comment section like scars — a digital mausoleum of everything I once tried to hide. They weren’t just insults; they marked the moment my private rebellion of lipstick and lace was dragged beneath a light I never invited. What began as curiosity became transgression; what felt intimate became spectacle. I wanted to shed the shame, to dissolve into quiet anonymity — and yet, shame has a way of staining what it touches.
What unsettled me most was the realisation: this story was never mine alone.
Throughout centuries, cross-dressing has threaded itself through every continent and creed — warriors clad in disguise, courtiers bent on theatre, dreamers defying the binaries of cloth and flesh. Still the world recoils. Why must expression ignite disgust? The reasons, tangled in fear and control, resist simplicity. Yet one truth rises clear as breath on glass: it is the tyranny of gender stereotypes that breathes disdain into difference.
Stereotypes are the mind’s oldest magic — a survival spell. We cast people into safe and unsafe, known and foreign. We pretend that certainty is safety, that categorisation is control. But the human need to conform, to anchor identity in expectation, corrodes the self. These binaries — masculine or feminine, stoic or soft — demand obedience, not empathy. They script our performances and forbid improvisation. And in that obedience, the spirit withers.
When I was younger, I kept asking questions no one seemed to hear. Why did power sit in short hair and muted tones? Why did colour — pastels, ribbons, lace — signify weakness? Each answer I found led only to confusion. “Normal” felt like a mirage — an ever-receding horizon of adequacy. After the incident online, that mirage shattered entirely. My private experiment became a public joke, my pictures passed around like evidence. The ridicuference was a disease only silence could cure.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: used stimulus 2 and title for protest…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 65%: Listen: The Global March for Child Labour Manilla's streets blister in the middy sun, yet the heat cannot dim…
Listen: The Global March for Child Labour
Manilla's streets blister in the middy sun, yet the heat cannot dim the roar of voices demanding change. Shoulder-to-shoulder, packed like sardines, a tide of voices refusing to be silenced. We march as one body, one heartbeat ripping off anything that gets in our way, to fight against the chains of child labour. I am not just a child of the crowd, I am an echo of my parents struggle and proof we will not be silenced.
Dancers in bright colourful costumes flitter around us. Colour flashes as they do traditional dances to the sound of voices ringing and metal drums banging, forcing others to listen. Those marches and rallies I've seen on TV felt dangerous and scary but here I feel safe, like I belong. Diversity from every nation coming together, ensuring we are heard as we fight to eliminate child labour.
We are here with 'Global March' an international company which has fought tirelessly to stop child labour and "promote and protect the rights of all children". Numerous rallies, marches, sit ins and boycotts have been planned around the world, but we are here at the beginning, the one that started them all.
In the Sweatshops - 1993
The overwhelming heat engulfs my senses and I am flashed back to my unforgiving childhood. A childhood that has shaped who I am and what I'm doing today.
There is no dawn in the sweatshops just the piercing, metallic clang at five AM that awoke us from our restless sleep and shoved us back into the machineries of survival. The air was thick and alive with flies that fed on our sweat. Their neverending buzz became a soundtrack of degradation that reminded us to keep our mouths shut and just listen.
Without any will left, the word tore out of me... "Enough!" The machines seemed to choke into silence. Hundreds of eyes burnt into me, a single spark of defiance in a furnace of fear. I was bashed, bruised and beaten, banished to the back of the shops Where I was forced to work in silence in the blasting heat with my toes deep in mud.
In the darkness humanity slipped from me. I was no longer a worker, not even a person, just a cog in a machine, tapped up to be used for profit.
Back to the March - 1998
Those chants from 1998 brought me back from those sweatshop memories and reminded us of the power of our voices put together where hope surges louder than despair.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: the gift of adversity
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 77.5%: Dear Asha, You’re fifteen, quiet and unsure of where you fit. They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the…
Dear Asha,
You’re fifteen, quiet and unsure of where you fit. They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, yet your mum couldn’t have fallen further. She was the middle child of a family with an absent father and too many wounds to count, but somehow, she became the beating heart of yours.
Your earliest memory with her begins in a water park. The air was filled with laughter and the smell of chlorine. You remember the sound of rushing water crashing against the pool’s edge as Mum lifted you above the waves. Her arms were strong, her laughter louder than the world around you. In her grasp you felt weightless — safe. Even in the deep end, where the bottom disappeared, she would paddle over and hold you. Back home, where shouting and drugs were as familiar as wallpaper, her arms became the one place where everything felt still. You didn’t know it then, but that was her gift — the ability to make safety from chaos.
But every gift comes with a price.
The curse of drugs haunted our family like a sickness passed through blood. You remember the morning the phone rang — a sound that still echoes in your bones. Mum’s voice cracked as she whispered “No…” before collapsing into sobs. You didn’t understand the word overdose, but you understood loss. You watched your mother’s strength fracture, just for a moment, and that was when you learned what heartbreak looked like up close.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Love, laugh, live… if only
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: This is a story that I regret not having a long time ago
This is a story that I regret not having a long time ago
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Framework 1: Writing about Country…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: My Country Moves Me (Speech by Olivia Thorne, delivered at the National Youth Forum on Country and Climate) My…
My Country Moves Me
(Speech by Olivia Thorne, delivered at the National Youth Forum on Country and Climate)
My name is Olivia Thorne, and I come from Burramine, a small town in northern Victoria where the land lies flat and bare, stitched together by orchards, river gums and the slow-moving Murray River. I stand before you not just as an Australian, but as a voice for Country — the soil that feeds us, the forests that breathe for us, and the rivers that remember what we have forgotten.
The title of my speech, “My Country Moves Me,” is not about relocation, but transformation — how the land shapes my understanding of home and urges me toward change. We need to mend what we have broken and return to a way of living with the land, not merely on it.
When I was a child, I would ride my horse past the pinecone orchards, down Duffty’s Bend at sunset. The air smelled of dust and sweetness; the horizon stretched forever. My father would say, “The land gives you everything, Liv. Most only see it as a landscape, but this place is home — and home must be cared for.” Those words have stayed with me.
Now those same fields are patched and silent. The billabongs lie dry, rivers shrink each year, and the hills that cradle our valley have burned more times than I can count. The silver-green eucalyptus trees that once shimmered in the heat now stand as blackened monuments to our neglect.
We call them fire seasons as if destruction were temporary, yet it has become a way of life. From 2019 to 2020, more than 1.5 million hectares of Victoria burned. Over 420 homes were lost. But numbers cannot capture the smell of burning gum trees or the silence where birdcalls once rang. To governments, these are statistics. To Country, they are cries for help.
Somewhere along the way, we forgot that Country is not ours to own.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Echoes of the Past
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 95%: "Echoes of the Past" November 2023, Arlington National Cemetery, a twenty-one gun salute cracks the air as…
"Echoes of the Past"
November 2023, Arlington National Cemetery, a twenty-one gun salute cracks the air as F-18s roar overhead trailing American colours. The crowd is a mix of grieving family members, fellow veterans and fellow activists who admired Pete's commitment to the anti-war movement. In the front row, Senator Tom Cotton sits stiffly in a jet black suit, his face unreadable. I look at his face and realise nothing has changed as I step up to the podium and sigh.
Today we honour a soldier. A friend. Peter was like a brother to me. We fought side by side - first in the jungles of Vietnam, protecting our country's ideals, and then in the streets of cities all over the world with banners in arms, demanding an end to the endless cycle of war. And now, I stood here, to bury my friend, not because of an enemy bullet, but because he had lost hope.
When Peter saw that America was sending more weapons to Israel, fuelling the war in Gaza, he realised that the past was repeating itself. The echoes were too deafening for him to bear. He realised that his fifty years of protesting in anti-war rallies had led to nothing.
And so, he took his own life.
[The crowd goes silent as I look at the coffin and then at the Senator.] I grip the podium, my knuckles turn white.
Senator, last month you condemned our anti-war protests stating "It is shameful to see those who once wore the uniform now standing against our closest ally."
It was the same dismissal we faced in 1971 from Senator John Stennis, who accused us of 'dishonour[ing] the uniform by breaking the law in protest".
There I was with Peter on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, throwing away the medals I had earned in Vietnam months before. The sun beating down on our backs as we held a banner over our head that read "Vietnam Veterans Against The War" in blood red.
Back then, walking the streets of D.C., shouting til our voices broke was nothing. Nothing compared to the mouths of cities clawing at our backs, legs and mud pulling at our boots as if death himself was trying to drag us under. Nothing compared to the light that shot like diamonds from a child's eyes—a light now extinguished, leaving two dark, frozen pools.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Should AI companies restrict the…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 60%: Imagine you wake up one day to find a humiliating video of yourself surfing through group chats and social…
Imagine you wake up one day to find a humiliating video of yourself surfing through group chats and social media. This video looks and sounds real and spreads faster than truth, but the reality is the video is fake. There is no way to prove the video is fraudulent and it looks so real that you yourself cannot disprove it. Emotions build up within you, and you fear how you will even show your face in public anymore. This is not science-fiction, it is a glimpse of the risks we face as artificial intelligence becomes more powerful and accessible.
AI is a revolutionary accomplishment in our progression of technology. Implementing AI has led to innovation in the medical, engineering as well as public administration fields. When used suitably with an intention to better society, it has been one of the greatest tools humanity has ever developed, but when found in the wrong hands, AI can be an instrument of corruption and mayhem
This poses the question, should everyone have the same access to AI?
Good morning/afternoon fellow government advisers and industry regulators. I stand before you in hopes to create a sense of urgency regarding the issue of wrongfully using AI in society. Recently artificial intelligence has shown to be more problematic than positive. We have witnessed AI being misused for identity theft, extortion, exploitation and other crimes. These topics require serious attention from policy makers and enforcers. We should push for regulations that require AI companies to limit public access to advanced features, while allowing qualified researchers and scientists full access for legitimate innovation.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Personal Journeys framework
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: The Choice : A parallel memoir Part I — Success Built on Sacrifice There are places you leave, not because you…
The Choice : A parallel memoir
Part I — Success Built on Sacrifice
There are places you leave, not because you want to—but because you have to. I remember the alley where it all began: mud under our feet, a trash can for a goal, Malik laughing as I kicked the ball too hard, sending it over the fence. We dreamed of stadiums, trophies, and cheers, yet neither of us knew what leaving home would demand.
I left home at twelve. My mother didn’t cry, but her hand rested on my shoulder, the same hand that had soothed scraped knees and bruised elbows. “Go make this worth it,” she whispered. I couldn’t look back. Home was warmth, love, laughter — a place I longed to stay, yet one that needed me to go.
I came from little, and football wasn’t a choice — it was a responsibility. My family needed me. Nights were the hardest: lying on a cot in a dorm that smelled of sweat and damp, I pictured my mother folding clothes, my siblings asleep in cramped rooms, all depending on a dream I was only beginning to chase. Every early morning, every blister, every aching muscle became a promise. I wasn’t training for trophies — I was fighting for them, for my family, for their future.
The academy was relentless. Coaches barked orders that stung like lashes, friends disappeared overnight, and talent alone was worthless. I memorized formations until my mind screamed, perfected free kicks until my legs trembled, ran until the cold bit through my skin. Pain became ordinary. Hunger became routine. I learned to carry it silently, to smile when exhaustion threatened to break me.
Step by step, I rose. First-team appearances, professional debut, international call-ups. Fans chanted my name; strangers wore my number on their backs. People called me one of the best, but they never saw the empty gyms, the rain-soaked pitches, the birthdays I missed, the friends I left behind. My victories were quiet, built on persistence, sacrifice, and purpose.
Part II — Success Built on Choice
I left home too, but for different reasons. My house had gold but no warmth. My parents’ love came in sharp words
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: writing about protest to the title…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 65%: The truth You all saw that. Right here, in front of everyone. His hand, on me. Not one of you said a word. Not…
The truth
You all saw that.
Right here, in front of everyone.
His hand, on me.
Not one of you said a word.
Not one of you even flinched.
Not one of you asked if I was okay.
You all just ignored it like you can't even see.
That's the thing isn't it, Women are always on display but never really seen. You make comments about how we look. You mimic our voices when we leave the room. You interupt, you diminish, you flirt just enough to make us uncomfortable but not enough to get you in trouble.
In this office, in the world women are regarded as a object. He touched me like I am a object, his to touch.
I am undermined in this workplace.
I am underestimated.
I am made to feel uncomfortable by my own boss.
But it's not just here, its all around.
Being scared to walk alone at night.
Being scared to get a uber alone.
Even being scared to live alone.
I am done living my life in fear,
I am done living my life in silence.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Protest and the Line through the wall
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 72.5%: The Conversation Academic Rigour, Journalistic Flair Environment + Energy Column Resist and Persist Published…
The Conversation
Academic Rigour, Journalistic Flair
Environment + Energy Column
Resist and Persist
Published 11th of June 2025 11:03 am GMT-7
As a marine scientist who has spent a lifetime researching the ocean and marine life, it hurts me to speak about the tragedy of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill caused by the company BP in 2010. During these 87 days, I watched the horrors of how “11 people and 82,000 birds, 6,165 sea turtles and around 25,900 other marine animals” suffered an early death. More than 200 million gallons of oil were spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, while BP, the oil giant responsible, scrambled to contain the catastrophe of its own making
Let me be clear, this was avoidable, BP’s negligence in safety procedures, failure to see the warning signs and the prioritisation of profits over people and the planet led to this disaster. How many more innocent lives must be lost? What followed was not just oil on water, it was oil in the lungs of dolphins, the feathers of birds and the home of countless marine animals.