VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: personal journeys
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 100%: You search the quiet crowd. Your eyes dart from face to face, scavenging for a crack in their stillness, some…
You search the quiet crowd. Your eyes dart from face to face, scavenging for a crack in their stillness, some sign that they are as terrified and hollow as you. They are bowed in surrender, a collective rhythm you cannot mimic, as if they are breathing air that you are being denied. You feel desperate. Angry. The ventilation hums a low, mocking drone through the floor. A cold coil of nausea twists in your gut. Your throat feels constricted, tight with the effort of not sobbing. You clamp your jaw shut, swallowing hard to push down the pressure rising in your throat, your vision blurring at the edges as the room begins to swim.
The Heifer 2: 216 ‘But perhaps you hate a thing, and it is good for you; and perhaps you love a thing, and it is bad for you. And God Knows, while you know not.’
You stare at the floor. The words ripple through the hall, absolute and infuriating. ‘God knows, while you know not.’ How could that be? How could it be ‘good’ to have my life stripped bare? How could you truly believe in a power that tears away the things you love and calls it mercy? Why is your ignorance a reason for your ruin? You glance up at the preacher. His steady gaze, his rhythmic, practised devotion. A statue carved from a conviction that has never been tested by the fire you are walking through. To him, this is a path. To you, it is a cage. He is loyal to a sealed fate that does not care if you break.
The mosque air is stagnant, heavy with the scent of dust and polished wood. The light feels hostile, the shafts of sun filtering through the lancet windows expose you. They highlight the dust as it settles on you, burying you in silence. The woven carpet beneath you is coarse, unyielding against your knees. You feel only the sharp edges of your own defiance. It offers no comfort. Each person around you bowed, clinging to a hope that you have already seen crushed. Everything is wrong. Faith has not answered your prayers. It has only stood silent while you burned.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: The choice
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: A thick layer of grey dust stuck to my skin. The tarpaulin covers, makeshift tin stores, and endless crowds of…
A thick layer of grey dust stuck to my skin.
The tarpaulin covers, makeshift tin stores, and endless crowds of sweat and grime. My mother reminded me to cover my mouth, the thin scarf doing little to block the air. Below us were rows and rows of every type of vegetable I’d never seen. Buckets of small jumping frogs, crabs and an odd collection of bugs. My brows furrowed, not in judgement but in contemplation. Their shouts echoed, every seller insisting we buy their fresh tomatoes or bright green okras. My mother’s familiar voice mingled with theirs — bidding, scoffing, giving in, or winning.
“This is how I always used to do it” she was proudly holding the bag of 30-rupee beans. To her, this was simply coming back. To me, this was treading around a world that I’d never lived in before.
The night before, she’d told me we’d all have to wake up early for the morning market. She said all the cheapest and freshest foods would be gone by 9 am. Dragging myself into my uncle’s car, we drove to the main ‘city’. I groaned as usual. I didn’t choose to move around clammy shoulders, squeezing my way through tight alleys and walkways. Avoiding puddles with strange smells, asking a store owner where the vegetable section was. I complained on the car ride back. I hadn't come all the way back home just to spend my days buying all the different, exotic foods my mum had been craving for 13 years. I didn’t understand that to her, to my parents, it was like being starved of the beach for that many years — an impossible feat for most Aussies. A choice they had made for me.
All I wanted, all I’d thought this would be, hugging the aunties, shaking the hands of my uncles, laughing with cousins. Given meals, gifts and chatting by the fire till the crickets awoke. Shopping for clothes in all the different stores, trying the street food and visiting the beautiful mountainsides. My expectations hadn’t been met yet, and I felt like my parents were being selfish.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Human rights
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 75%: Human rights Dear Future Daughter I woke up with a sudden urge for us to talk 2 months ago, I threw away all…
Human rights
Dear Future Daughter
I woke up with a sudden urge for us to talk
2 months ago, I threw away all the representations of objectifying artefacts of womanhood. My pink lace bra, girdle, makeup and strappy heels are all gone. 200 women of all walks of life followed me. We lit the flames and burnt these things to the ground. You may wonder why say a theatrical display, why not democratic discussion, a polite plea, or a meek letter. Well, society has a habit of ignoring women, especially quiet ones. We had to scream to be heard. Are Human rights not up for negotiation. Today is the day we stopped letting our human rights be dismissed as " whiny women’s problems. Dignity, equality, and justice is what we demanded. Much like Aretha Franklin, we performed, except we used the streets as a backdrop. As Aretha famously sang, we demanded ‘’R-E-S-P-E-C-T’’.
The Miss America Beauty pageant was a catalyst for our protest. I watched as a group of glamorous women walked past me. They wore sashes that declared that they were part of the 41st Miss America Beauty pageantry series. As I saw them, pity flooded through my heart. They would have been forced to be on the strictest diet and exercise regimens and had to sit frozen for hours as every flaw on their face was covered with makeup. I use to be a prisoner of that same artifice. It was only when I realised that my girdle and shift dress were the uniform of my oppression that I was able to lead these women out the gates and to the stadium hosting the 41st Mrs America Pageant in protest. What's the big deal in women being celebrated for their beauty, you may wonder? Well, do you see men being celebrated and compared for their beauty? I thought not. As humans, women have the right to dignity and respect for their inner qualities and their contributions to society, not just their appearances. We deserve not to have to worry that we will be discriminated against in career settings if we aren't lucky enough to be born looking like Marilyn Monroe
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Writing about protest: SOLIDARITY
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 95%: Solidarity (A speech to the Year 12 assembly) Before sunrise at last year’s dawn service, in the cold and the…
Solidarity
(A speech to the Year 12 assembly)
Before sunrise at last year’s dawn service, in the cold and the near-silence, an Aboriginal Elder, Uncle Mark Brown, stepped forward in solidarity to welcome us to his land. The sky was still black, with no hint of the day to come. He had barely begun when the heckling started. The boos cut through the crowd the way a dropped plate cuts through a silent room: not loud so much as unforgivable.
I want to tell you what happened next, because it taught me what protest really is. It isn’t a banner or a megaphone. It begins with a decision**, made in the dark, before anyone can see whether morning is coming.**
He could’ve stopped. He could have waited for someone in charge to step in. Instead, he held his ground, found his voice, and led the crowd in answering those who were being disrespectful. Strangers who had come together to remember unified into a single, steady voice, not a riot, not a shouting match, but a refusal to let disrespect stand over more than sixty thousand years of continuous culture. On a day built on unity, a protest had defended it. It started in solidarity. It started with one voice. It did not stay one for long. Light doesn’t arrive all at once. It begins as a thin line along the horizon, and then it is everywhere. So did the voices.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Resist and Persist
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: Resist and Persist As we gather here tonight at this press conference, I acknowledge your questions about the…
Resist and Persist
As we gather here tonight at this press conference, I acknowledge your questions about the event that took place at Springville today. Respectfully, I ask you to hold onto those questions.
I have been advised to begin by thanking the emergency services, acknowledging the grief of the Springville community and assuring the American public that their government is doing everything in it’s power to prevent another tragedy.
I have been advised to say that last sentence very carefully.
Because I have said it before.
Fifteen years ago, in the town I grew up, I stood outside another school and listened to another politician promise that our children would be safe.
And now, this morning, nineteen children and six adults have been pronounced dead at Springville Elementary school.
I was given a statement to read tonight.
It is six pages long.
It contains the words unity, healing and unprecedented tragedy eleven times. It does not contain the word failure once.
So forgive me, but I will not be reading it.
Gun violence in this country is not news to any of us. We have watched communities mourn, parents bury their children and politicians stand before cameras promising that this time, things will be different.
In 1791, the Second Amendment established the right of Americans to bear arms. But I continue wondering whether our Founding Fathers imagined a country where our children were tripping over each others cold bodies in the hallways, resisting the need to cry and scream from their hiding spots.
Sandy Hook Elementary School. December 2012.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: writing about play
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 77.5%: Exam Creative Draft #2 The box lived under the under-stair cupboard, smelling of stale dust, mothballs and…
Exam Creative Draft #2
The box lived under the under-stair cupboard, smelling of stale dust, mothballs and cedar chips. When you popped its brass latch, the hinges gave a sharp, metallic screech - a doorway opening into whatever world we chose to invent that afternoon
Inside, was a universe of discarded texture: soft, frayed velvet cloaks, oversized plastic heels that clacked like thunder against the wooden floor, and the plastic stethoscope tubing cold against our necks. We slid our small feet into our fathers' scuffed leather work shoes, swaddled ourselves in mothers' silky scarves, and suddenly we were ready to take on the world.
"Doctor! Doctor! quick, he's got a fever!" my sister, would shout, her voice sharp with dramatic panic as she propped her stuffed teddy bear across a pillow, pretending it was an operating bed.
"Stand back!" I'd reply, puffing out my chest and adjusting my oversized plastic glasses. "I need three cups of magic juice, stat!"
We drank imaginary espresso from tiny, chipped plastic cups, smacking our lips at the bitter taste of air.
"Rough day at the office honey?" I'd sigh, leaning against the kitchen counter, that was merely too tall for me to reach, leaning the counter with a hand over my lower back, perfectly mimicking my father's heavy, post work exhaustion.
"Devastating" my sister would answer, shaking her head solemnly as she stirred a pot full of plastic buttons. "The budget is completely ruined with this thing called inflation." She looked up puzzled. Whatever that word meant.
We collapsed into giggles. Back then, adulthood was a glorious costume. We couldn't wait to grow up, so we played it. Time was endless, measured only by the golden light fading through the window mesh and the sizzle of dinner in the kitchen pan.
Then, somewhere along the line, the script changed.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: The Things We Carry (Autumn bench image)
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: The Things We Carry. TERMS AND CONDITIONS Agreement no: 07-214 Parties: [REDACTED] Commencement: 14th February…
The Things We Carry.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
Agreement no: 07-214
Parties: [REDACTED]
Commencement: 14th February 2014
Status: Under review.
ACCEPTANCE OF TERMS
Acceptance of this agreement confirms that both parties understand its conditions. No expiry date has been specified. All items carried forward remain the responsibility of their owner, including those never intended to be kept.
ORIGINAL CONDITIONS
The parties agree to save bench seats at lunch, keep secrets, remember birthdays and provide assistance following a fall. In a situation where a red skittle is available, it should be surrendered to the one who dislikes green skittles. Regardless of the others' preferences.
The parties further acknowledge that the conditions were established without negotiation. At an age when a reserved seat constituted sufficient proof of affection, no written confirmation was considered necessary.
STANDARD USE
The parties took turns showering each other with crunchy autumn leaves, shared warm hot chocolate and filled the margins of their journals with scribbles. Forty three minutes could be spent selecting the perfect fall film at a sleepover, only for neither party to watch it. 
These activities were considered amazing at the time. No records were kept of conversations continued past midnight or jokes which were incomprehensible to anyone else. The importance was self-evident. 
It is noted that at that age, sacrifice was difficult to recognise when everything still seemed to be working.
MODIFICATION OF TERMS. 
At approximately 13 years of age the following amendments were made.
Laugh when others laugh.
Do not mention the friendship often
Do not ask the other party for anything
Always respond “nothing” when asked “whats wrong”
No formal request for the amendments were issued, the user made the changes independently in hope for continued acceptance without creating issues.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: COUNTRY IS WHAT YOU MAKE IT
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: Dear India, My beloved mother, how are you? It sure has been a while since I visited. I write to you, sitting…
Dear India,
My beloved mother, how are you? It sure has been a while since I visited. I write to you, sitting across the Yarra River, gazing at the sparkling stream of water as it restlessly dances down Melbourne city. A leaf falls from a nearby tree, onto the river as it travels far away, leaving my sight. It makes me realise that I am very much like that leaf because, I too, left my tree and went far away. I write to you, expressing this great conflict in my mind, it’s like holding a compass that refuses to settle, its needle spinning wildly between the home I left and the life I’m building. As I grow older and settle in Australia, I wonder where in my heart you and Australia sit in unity? Or is it just not possible to acknowledge that I’m both, a child of India and Australia?
I still remember, it was the 4th of December. I had jolted awake from the announcement of our landing by the captain.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please stay seated and fasten your seatbelt as we prepare for landing.”
He went on, mentioning words like ‘Tullamarine’ or ‘humid temperature’, words I couldn’t quite understand back then, as my English was restricted. Something about his announcement gave me the feeling that I would remember it forever. I gazed through the window, the lights of Australia seemed as if one had scattered stars across the deep, dark ocean. India’s lights looked like stars too. Though, they were more scattered and came in various different shapes and colours. The unstable rocking of the plane made me clutch on to ‘Bhaloo’ by my side, even harder. Later, when I entered my uncle’s home, it felt foreign to feel the soft, woolly carpet beneath my feet, whereas back at home, I would feel the freezing cold marble floor. There were no terraces in houses in Australia. I couldn’t go up to the terrace and watch fluorescent green parrots play with one another as I listened to the playfully tuned horns of nearby passing trucks. The unfamiliarity of Australia overwhelmed me. It captured me in a cave of deep conflict. At the age of 4, I had already decided that I would not enjoy living in Australia.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: We cry because we care…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: We Cry Because We Care ESPN News Services - Opinion Andres Molina Feb 26th 2026, 9:02 AM Last week, football…
We Cry Because We Care
ESPN News Services - Opinion
Andres Molina
Feb 26th 2026, 9:02 AM
Last week, football was once again overshadowed by something far uglier than rivalry. During Real Madrid's Champions League playoff game away to SL Benfica, the spotlight was taken off the football and onto the disturbing scenes that unfolded during the aftermath of Vinicius Jr's goal for Real Madrid, which proved to be the only goal in a 1-0 win for Los Blancos.
After his undeniably brilliant goal and a more controversial celebration, Brazilian winger, Vinicius Jr, became the target of racial abuse by Argentine Benfica player, Gianluca Prestianni.
What caught most fans' attention, apparently, was Vinicius' emotional breakdown after temporarily abandoning the game, which he faced profound criticism for.
Football has never been just a game. Politics have long been intertwined with the sport, which has been and remains a platform for expression of social and political views by anyone to a global audience.
Protest in football can garner great attention, face heavy backlash, and help catalyse positive real change in the world.
AS IT UNFOLDED
Vinicius Jr scored what may be one of the greatest goals of his career last week in Portugal, and his celebration brought about controversy when he danced in front of the corner flag with a Benfica logo on it (for which he received a yellow card). Vinicius was then approached by Prestianni.
Prestianni could be seen, with his mouth covered by his shirt, remarking something at Vinicius, prompting a visibly distraught Vini to immediately alert the referee.
Referee Francois Letexier paused the match amid the tense encounter and Vini, in protest, ran off the pitch and sat in the dugout, visibly emotional.
For 15 minutes, the game was abandoned as heated encounters broke out between players of both sides and Vini conversed passionately with Real Madrid coach, Alvaro Arbeloa, and Benfica coach, José Mourinho.
During Vini's passionate act of protest and non-compliance, fans singled out his emotional breakdown into tears, finding humour in the powerful image of a crying Vini fighting against injustice. The hate Vini received after his temporary abandonment of the game just highlights how fans cannot comprehend how Vini's breakdown was proof of investment and love rather than anger or weakness.
The 15 minutes for which the match was abandoned not only brought the game to a necessary halt, but also challenged normalised silence among players of colour that allow such incidents to persist.
PLAYER AND MANAGER REACTIONS
After the game, Real Madrid teammates Kylian Mbappé and Trent Alexander-Arnold, as well as coaches of both sides expressed their views in post-match interviews.
Kylian Mbappé revealed Prestianni called Vini a monkey 5 times. He refused to call Prestianni by name, stating "he doesn't deserve it" and "he doesn't deserve to play [in the] Champions League".
Mbappé also stated, "whatever [Vini] decides, we'll do", revealing the Real Madrid players would have permanently abandoned the game in a display of protest and support.
Alexander-Arnold labelled Prestianni's actions a "disgrace to the sport", reiterating Real Madrid's full backing of Vinícius.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Write about protest: STEPPING UP
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: Stepping Up A speech to the Year 12 assembly Before sunrise at last year’s dawn service, in the cold and the…
Stepping Up
A speech to the Year 12 assembly
Before sunrise at last year’s dawn service, in the cold and the near-silence, an Aboriginal elder stepped forward to welcome us to his land. He had barely begun when the heckling started. The boos swept through the respectfully quiet crowd like a gust across a candle flame, and for a moment the whole morning flickered.
I want to tell you what happened next, because it taught me what protest really is. It isn’t a banner or a megaphone. It begins as a decision.
He could have stopped. He could have waited for someone in charge to step in. Instead he held his ground, found his voice, and led the crowd in answering those who were being disrespectful. Strangers who had come to remember became a single, steady voice, not a riot, not a shouting match, but a refusal to let disrespect stand over more than sixty thousand years of continuous culture. On a day built on unity, a protest had defended it. It started as one voice. It did not stay one for long.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Unbroken Stimulus: 'To fight…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 82.5%: Unbroken An Inquest into the Death of [name] because of Police Arrest Office of the state coroner Case File…
Unbroken
An Inquest into the Death of [name] because of Police Arrest
Office of the state coroner
Case File no.: 12-21-C
Name of deceased: [name]
Age: 21
Place of death: Demonstration site
Date of death: October 21st 2026
Cause of death: Haemorrhage
Manner of death: Homicide
Formal Findings
At approximately 5:17 pm, during a demonstration, the deceased collapsed. Nearby demonstrators gave first aid until medical personnel arrived at the scene.
Many other individuals were injured. Due to lack of stretchers available, a demonstration flag left planted in the ground was pulled free to carry the deceased to the ambulance.
Blood had soaked through the cloth and over the slogans painted in it. Death was pronounced shortly after during the transport to medical facilities.
Even after examining the remnants, the metallic iron still lingers within me, unable to be washed away. Even the red smudges on the slogans written on the fabric – it was a red so striking, yet so harrowing to me.
Autopsy found fragments of a ballistic projectile in the soft tissue surrounding the clavicle region. The projectile ruptured the aorta, causing the fatal haemorrhage. Further fragments lodged in the clavicle itself produced two additional fractures.
Examination of the clothing showed no evident gunpowder residue, indicating the shot was fired from a distance.
Not just [name], but the hundreds of demonstrators all went into the battlefield accepting the risks, understanding the brutality that may arrive because of them. Even with acknowledging it, having them not even reveal their faces to them, denying the courtesy of showing their intentions… even death-row inmates are granted a scene for their execution.
Personal belongings recovered: Worker’s ID, wallet with photos, faded protest leaflet and a receipt for water and bread.
To anyone else, these are just everyday objects. However, each object had significance to the life of [name]. What they think, feel, like and believe. Even the receipt for bread, it meant they planned to eat the bread later… it meant they had planned for a later.
Circumstances Surrounding the Scene
The demonstration began early in the afternoon. A large civilian gathering occupied public spaces near government buildings.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Unbroken Stimulus: 'To fight…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 72.5%: Unbroken An Inquest into the Death of [name] because of Police Arrest Office of the state coroner Case File…
Unbroken
An Inquest into the Death of [name] because of Police Arrest
Office of the state coroner
Case File no.: 12-21-C
Name of deceased: [name]
Age: 21
Place of death: Demonstration site
Date of death: October 21st 2026
Cause of death: Haemorrhage
Manner of death: Homicide
Formal Findings
At approximately 5:17 pm, during a demonstration, the deceased collapsed. Nearby demonstrators gave first aid until medical personnel arrived at the scene.
Many other individuals were injured. Due to lack of stretchers available, a demonstration flag left planted in the found was pulled free to carry the deceased to the ambulance.
Blood had soaked through the cloth and over the slogans painted in it. Death was pronounced shortly after during the transport to medical facilities.
Even after examining the remnants, the metallic iron still lingers within me, unable to be washed away. Even the red smudges on the slogans written on the fabric – it’s a red so striking, yet so harrowing to me.
Autopsy found fragments of a ballistic projectile in the soft tissue surrounding the clavicle region. The projectile ruptured the aorta, causing the fatal haemorrhage. Further fragments lodged in the clavicle itself produced two additional fractures.
Examination of the clothing showed no evident gunpowder residue, indicating the shot was fired from a distance.
Not just [name], but the hundreds of demonstrators all went into the battlefield accepting the risks, understanding the brutality that may arrive because of them. Even with acknowledging it, having them not even reveal their daces to them, denying the courtesy of showing their intentions… even death row inmates are granted a scene for the death.
Personal belongings recovered: Worker’s I.D, wallet with photos, faded protest leaflet and a receipt for water and bread.
To anyone else, these are just everyday objects. However, each object had significance to the life of [name]. What they think, feel, like and believe. Even the receipt for bread, it meant they planned to eat the bread later… it meant they had planned for a later.
Circumstances Surrounding the Scene
The demonstration began early in the afternoon. A large civilian gathering occupied public spaces near government buildings.
Witnesses described banners, signs, placards and a crowd chanting. Video evidence confirms the wave of banners and united chanting. Several witnesses described it as “lively and peaceful” leading up to the incident.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Unbroken Stimulus: 'To fight…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 75%: Unbroken An Inquest into the Death of [name] because of Police Arrest Office of the state coroner Case File…
Unbroken
An Inquest into the Death of [name] because of Police Arrest
Office of the state coroner
Case File no.: 12-21-C
Name of deceased: [name]
Age: 21
Place of death: Demonstration site
Date of death: October 21st 2026
Cause of death: Haemorrhage
Manner of death: Homicide
Formal Findings
At approximately 5:17 pm, during a demonstration, the deceased collapsed. Nearby demonstrators gave first aid until medical personnel arrived at the scene.
Many other individuals were injured. Due to lack of stretchers available, a demonstration flag left planted in the found was pulled free to carry the deceased to the ambulance.
Blood had soaked through the cloth and over the slogans painted in it. Death was pronounced shortly after during the transport to medical facilities.
Even after examining the remnants, the metallic iron still lingers within me, unable to be washed away. Even the red smidges on the slogans written on the fabric – it’s a red so striking, yet so harrowing to me.
Autopsy found fragments of a ballistic projectile in the soft tissue surrounding the clavicle region. The projectile ruptured the aorta, causing the fatal haemorrhage. Further fragments lodged in the clavicle itself produced two additional fractures.
Examination of the clothing showed no evident gunpower residue, indicating the shot was fired from a distance.
Not just [name], but the hundreds of demonstrators all went into the battlefield accepting the risks, understanding the brutality that may arrive because of them. Even with acknowledging it, having them not even reveal their daces to them, denying the courtesy of showing their intentions… even death row inmates are granted a scene for the death.
Personal belongings recovered: Worker’s I.D, wallet with photos, faded protest leaflet and a receipt for water and bread.
To anyone else, these are just everyday objects. However, each object had significance to the life of [name]. What they think, feel, like and believe. Even the receipt for bread, it meant they planned to eat the bread later… it meant they had planned for a later.
Circumstances Surrounding the Scene
The demonstration began early in the afternoon. A large civilian gathering occupied public spaces near government buildings.
Witnesses described banners, signs, placards and a crowd chanting. Video evidence confirms the wave of banners and united chanting. Several witnesses described it as “lively and peaceful” leading up to the incident.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Quiet voices, lasting change
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 97.5%: I didn't expect silence to be so loud. For twelve years, my mornings had started before the sun. I would pull…
I didn't expect silence to be so loud.
For twelve years, my mornings had started before the sun. I would pull on my steel-capped boots, make a coffee for the road and listen to the tools rattle in the back of the ute. Then Porter Davis collapsed, and almost overnight the routine disappeared. The phone stopped ringing, my tools stayed untouched, and every morning I still woke at six with nowhere to go. On the news, they called it a “market correction”, a phrase almost insulting in its neatness. A correction suggested something had been fixed; for hundreds of us left without work, everything had simply been abandoned.
When the union announced the National Day of Action, I told myself I would go. Sam had messaged our old group chat, asking who was coming. For a while I stared at the screen, wondering what difference another body in another crowd could make. Eventually, I found a piece of plywood and painted across it:
WE BUILT YOUR HOMES.
WHO STANDS UP FOR OURS?
It wasn't clever, but it said what I had spent months failing to put into words.
At the station, Sam, Kosta and Dave were waiting in worn hoodies and scuffed boots. The train arrived crowded with hi-vis: apprentices beside old-timers, bricklayers and sparkies squeezed into whatever space remained. At every station, more workers climbed aboard, carrying banners and cardboard signs. Nobody had organised us into groups, and nobody needed to. Losing my job had felt like something that had happened to me alone. Looking around that carriage, I realised how many people had been sitting at home believing exactly the same thing.
We heard the protest before we saw it. A chant rolled between the buildings and gathered force along Swanston Street. Thousands of voices answered each other as banners rose above a sea of fluorescent shirts. Glass towers loomed overhead, reflecting the crowd back at itself: banks, offices and boardrooms where decisions were made about people whose names would never be known to those making them. We marched beneath them anyway.
At first, I didn't chant. I simply held my sign and walked. Sam joined in, then Kosta and Dave. Eventually, so did I. My voice vanished beneath thousands of others, but strangely, that was what made it matter. Alone, none of us could have filled that street. Together, it was impossible not to hear us.
Near the intersection, workers had gathered around a temporary platform to tell their stories. One man had gone weeks without pay; an apprentice's company had folded before he could qualify. When someone asked whether anybody from Porter Davis wanted to speak, nobody moved.
I looked around at the faces beside me. Some were familiar, others weren't, but I still knew what they had lost.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: ‘My story is ready There’s enough to…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: This is me I still have the first roll of film i ever shot, 16 frames, half of them ruined due to my own…
This is me
I still have the first roll of film i ever shot, 16 frames, half of them ruined due to my own impatience. That roll of film taught me six steps i use behind every photograph i make: Load, expose, develop, fix, wash and print. Which i learned the summer i turned 16 in a borrowed darkroom. I did not know yet that those six steps mapped the slowest journey of my life.
Step 1: Loading. You do this step in total darkness, no light allowed or the film is ruined before its begun. I was twelve on the bus home from school, swimming carnival, when a boy from my year fell asleep against the window. The late sun slanting across his face. I studied him furitvely, until something plummeted in my stomach, which i had no words for yet. I told myself the feeling was normal, until it sounded like a lie i was rehearsing. I told noone, not for years and barely admitted the truth to myself. That afternoon i picked up a habit i still catch myself doing; scanning the room before letting my guard down. I held the secret alone, frightened by it, and embarrassed by that fear. Yet beneath both, surprisingly certain.
Step 2: Exposure. The shutter opens and light hits the film, whether the photographer is ready or not. That is the risk. Photographers call it exposure, because it is the instant an image becomes real, and therefore visible to those who care to look. The word carries two senses, the exposure one chooses. Mine was on the backsteps of my friend Athans house, both of us on the cold concrete, him still in his footy jumper, and my heart pounding so loud you could hear it in my ears. Every version of the sentence i rehearsed deserted me. We pretended to look at our phones, to avoid meeting the others eye, and then i said it. Much quieter than i had meant to: “I think i like guys.” Three seconds of silence followed, which i actually counted, before he replied so casually as if i had confessed to being left handed. “Cool, want a TimTam?” Relief flooded my body so fiercely, my eyes stung. For once the secret felt lighter than the silence around it. I had never been so grateful for a biscuit before in my life. Then there is the exposure one does not choose, the constant dread, someone may expose the photo before its ready.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: there is none this is the adaptable one
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 77.5%: [EXAM TITLE] They called it disobedience. We called it resistance. Protest, I came to understand, is not…
[EXAM TITLE]
They called it disobedience. We called it resistance. Protest, I came to understand, is not merely the raising of a voice or the breaking of a law. It begins when obedience becomes an endorsement of injustice. [ADD TITLE/STIMULUS] I entered Holloway believing protest was something one did. I left knowing it was something one became.
The prison gates slammed behind me. I was ordered into a rough prison dress, marked with arrows that branded me a criminal. My mother's handkerchief had been taken with everything else. They took my name, my clothes and my freedom. They thought there was nothing left to surrender. They had forgotten that I could still refuse.
The first morning, they placed a bowl of porridge before me. Steam rose in pale, obedient spirals. Beyond the iron door, keys rattled; somewhere along the corridor, a woman was weeping.
"No breakfast?" the prison officer asked.
"No."
Such a small word. Barely enough to disturb the air. Yet it was the first decision that morning which belonged entirely to me. I had joined the hunger strike. I was frightened. But I feared becoming accustomed to their cruelty even more.
Politics, we were told, was no place for women. We could work, raise sons with rights denied to us, and obey laws we could not shape. I remember hearing Emmeline Pankhurst speak of a government that depended upon our obedience. Her words stayed with me. If they would not grant us a voice, we would make them hear it. We petitioned Parliament, marched beneath banners of purple, white and green, and demanded representation from men who mistook our exclusion for natural order. We were dismissed as hysterical, condemned as disorderly, arrested for disturbing the peace.
But what peace was there to disturb?
The tranquillity of the privileged often depends upon the silence of those they oppress. Protest becomes necessary when institutions mistake the absence of resistance for consent.
I remember the procession through London: hundreds of women, their boots striking the cobblestones in imperfect unison. Beside me marched a seamstress whose fingers bore the scars of endless labour; behind us, a mother carrying a sleeping child. Different lives, united by the same intolerable truth: our futures were governed by those who refused to hear us.
"Do you think they'll listen?" the young girl beside me whispered, her voice trembling.
I could not answer.
[ADD STIMULUS]
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: The Changing Self Stimulus 1 and 2
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: The Changing Self All around me the world moved in its usual rush. Shoes scuffing on pavement, engines idling…
The Changing Self
All around me the world moved in its usual rush. Shoes scuffing on pavement, engines idling noisily, people with places to be. I had places to be too, I just wasn’t ready to face them. Instead, I was stuck somewhere between a screen and a playlist, sealed off from it all. I felt it before I saw it, a cold rush of air and diesels, the wheeze of mechanical doors closing. By the time I looked up it was already pulling away, just the taillights, indifferent, disappearing into traffic. My jaw tightened. I checked my watch, then checked it again, as if glaring at it hard enough might drag the numbers backwards. Yet as time kept on ticking regardless, I was left in the same spot, waiting anxiously. My eyes restlessly tracking every bus that glided past on the other side, willing one of them to be mine, knowing none of them were.
I noticed a strange man from the corner of my eye. He sat down without ceremony, wearing a worn black jacket with a small rip forming on the right elbow. He held a long, skinny cigarette in one hand and a rusted lighter in the other. I didn’t want to look at him for too long; there was something unkempt about him, something unresolved. It seemed almost familiar which frightened me a little, and I quietly decided that he wasn’t someone worth noticing.
I felt a light tap. The man, now standing, towered over me. His broad figure shielded me from the diesel filled air whooshing by. “Hey, you got a lighter?” he gestured to my overflowing shoulder bag. I don’t smoke, but I vividly remembered spotting a bright blue lighter at the bottom of my front pocket a few weeks ago. Keeping my gaze down, I swiftly unzipped the pocket and shuffled my hand around before finally pulling it out from the chaos that was my bag. Dimples formed on his cheeks as he thanked me with a childlike smile, the corners of his mouth almost reaching his ears. Startled from his overjoyed show of appreciation, I smiled back reluctantly.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: The Changing Self Stimulus 1 and 2
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 77.5%: The Changing Self All around me the world moved in its usual rush. Shoes scuffing on pavement, engines idling…
The Changing Self
All around me the world moved in its usual rush. Shoes scuffing on pavement, engines idling noisily, people with places to be. I had places to be too, I just wasn’t ready to face them. Instead, I was stuck somewhere between a screen and a playlist, sealed off from it all. I felt it before I saw it, a cold rush of air and diesels, the wheeze of mechanical doors closing. By the time I looked up it was already pulling away, just the taillights, indifferent, disappearing into traffic. My jaw tightened. I checked my watch, then checked it again, as if glaring at it hard enough might drag the numbers backwards. But as time kept on ticking regardless, I was left in the same spot, waiting anxiously. My eyes restlessly tracking every bus that glided past on the other side, willing one of them to be mine, knowing none of them were.
I noticed a strange man from the corner of my eye. He sat down without ceremony, wearing a worn black jacket with a small rip forming on the right elbow. He held a long, skinny cigarette in one hand and a rusted lighter in the other. I didn’t want to look at him for too long, there was something unkempt about him, something unresolved. It seemed almost familiar which frightened me a little, and I quietly decided that he wasn’t someone worth noticing.
I felt a light tap. The man, now standing, towered over me. His broad figure shielded me from the diesel filled air whooshing by. “Hey, you got a lighter?” he gestured to my overflowing shoulder bag. I don’t smoke, but I vividly remembered spotting a bright blue lighter at the bottom of my front pocket a few weeks ago. Keeping my gaze down, I swiftly unzipped the pocket and shuffled my hand around before finally pulling it out from the chaos that was my bag. Dimples formed on his cheeks as he thanked me with a childlike smile, the corners of his mouth almost reaching his ears. Startled from his overjoyed show of appreciation, I smiled back reluctantly.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: The Changing Self Stimulus 1 and 2
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 75%: The Changing Self All around me the world moved in its usual rush. Shoes scuffing on pavement, engines idling…
The Changing Self
All around me the world moved in its usual rush. Shoes scuffing on pavement, engines idling noisily, people with places to be. I had places to be too, I just wasn’t ready to face them. Instead, I was stuck somewhere between a screen and a playlist, sealed off from it all. I felt it before I saw it, a cold rush of air and diesels, the wheeze of mechanical doors closing. By the time I looked up it was already pulling away, just the taillights, indifferent, disappearing into traffic. My jaw tightened. I checked my watch, then checked it again, as if glaring at it hard enough might drag the numbers backwards. But time kept on ticking regardless, I was left in the same spot, waiting anxiously. My eyes restlessly tracking every bus that glided past on the other side, willing one of them to be mine, knowing none of them were.
I noticed a strange man from the corner of my eye. He sat down without ceremony, wearing a worn black jacket with a small rip forming on the right elbow. His hands were preoccupied with a long skinny cigarette in one and a rusted lighter in the other. I didn’t want to look at him for too long, there was something unkempt about him, something unresolved. It seemed almost familiar which frightened me a little, and I quietly decided that he wasn’t someone worth noticing.
I felt a light tap. The man, now standing, towered over me. His broad figure shielded me from the diesel filled air whooshing by. “Hey, you got a lighter?” he gestured to my overflowing shoulder bag. I don’t smoke, but I vividly remembered spotting a bright blue lighter at the bottom of my front pocket a few weeks ago. Keeping my gaze down, I swiftly unzipped the pocket and shuffled my hand around before finally pulling it out from the chaos that was my bag. Dimples formed on his cheeks as he thanked me with a childlike smile, the corners of his mouth almost reaching his ears. Startled from his overjoyed show of appreciation, I smiled back reluctantly.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Oedipus the King: Knowledge as…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: I’d like to begin with an acknowledgment of the traditional owners of the land—the Wurundjeri people of the…
I’d like to begin with an acknowledgment of the traditional owners of the land—the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation.
October 14th, 2023. The Referendum on a Voice to Parliament. I was fifteen, watching the television with a knot in my stomach as the map of Australia filled with red and yellow. No, yes, no, yes. Surely the acknowledged nation would recognise the voices of its First Peoples? But as the red swallowed the map, I understood something uncomfortable: the sacrificed voices of Aboriginal people had not been enough.
Back then, I believed shouting was the loudest thing a person could do. I thought you needed a megaphone, a banner, a crowd, a collective march. I marched because silence felt like complicity. I shouted because I believed volume was power. I was wrong. Because as loudly as I shouted, there were voices louder than mine, drowning mine out.
The following year, I stood in the dusty car park of a rural Victorian pioneer settlement, a place my teacher had taken us to “learn about early colonial life.” Behind a rubbish bin, a plaque read: “The Conquered Desert.” Inside, displays of white settlers hammering ingots were narrated by a guide praising the “brave pioneers” who took this land—the land labelled Terra Nullius.
Nobody’s land. A legal fiction designed to take over a land where “nobody” was there. Britain declared that Aboriginal people did not count as “someone.” Taking the land of the vulnerable, the people without a voice, Britain declared that Aboriginal people did not exist—not as people with laws, families, or ownership. You can’t steal from nobody. You can’t murder nobody. You can’t declare war on nobody. Terra Nullius wasn’t ignorance. It was an invention. A legal lie written on paper to silence them. Until 1967, Aboriginal people weren’t even counted in the Australian Constitution. They weren’t mentioned at all. Just absent. The law didn’t need to call them animals; it simply left them out. And sometimes, erasure is crueller than a title.
That noticing was my first voice. I called it protest, not resistance. I only knew something felt wrong.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Small Acts, Big wins Stimulus…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: Small Acts, Big Wins Transcript of a speech delivered at a Saigon University peace rally during the terminal…
Small Acts, Big Wins
Transcript of a speech delivered at a Saigon University peace rally during the terminal collapse of the Vietnam War by South Vietnamese ARVN infantryman Le Trung Hieu — April 1975:
Look around you today. Listen to the sound of the artillery echoing on the horizon. The North’s forces are closing in, and time is running out for us all. The men in power claim that only military conquests matter, but keeping our people alive is the only true win left.
I stand before you not as a hero, but as a man who has walked through the ashes of our homeland and seen too many young boys die for a lie.
We have endured a century of foreign boots, first the French who bled our country dry, and then the Americans who brought destruction and called it “help.” They rained down Agent Orange until our jungles became graveyards, poisoning young men who only wanted the small act of defending their homes. And when the cost rose, the Americans boarded their ships and abandoned us.
And where are our own leaders now when our people desperately need their help?
While teenage soldiers were starving in the Central Highlands without rice or clean water, President Thiệu sat in air-conditioned Saigon palaces. To the profiteers, this war was a business. Every soldier shipped to the front was money in their pockets. When the front lines crumbled, Thiệu fled to Taiwan with gold, leaving us to burn in the wreckage of his corruption.
Why are we still bleeding for a ghost regime that even its leader has deserted? Why sacrifice our brothers for their delusional idea of a big win?
They paste banners across our streets commanding us to “Exterminate the Communists” and “Defend the Outpost of Freedom.” They want us to believe this conflict is a grand crusade to change the world. But I have carried dying boys. I have seen mothers weeping with starving children. This is no longer South versus North. This is a choice between life and death.
This war has gone too far. The killing has outlasted reason and morality.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: framework - protest
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 100%: The first thing I noticed was the flag. We were two hours into the march: hoarse, sunburned, glitter caught in…
The first thing I noticed was the flag.
We were two hours into the march: hoarse, sunburned, glitter caught in the cracks of the cobblestones, a bass line shaking the shutters of the old buildings on either side. Then the front of the crowd slowed, and the sound thinned the way a room does when someone says a name.
We all knew why we were there. There are still streets in this country where two women cannot hold hands at a bus stop without checking over their shoulders, and a march is the only argument we have that cannot be talked over: ten thousand bodies, in daylight, refusing to be anywhere else.
On the left, in a doorway, stood an old man in a pressed shirt buttoned to the collar, as though he had dressed for church. In both hands, held against his chest like a shield, he had a flag. Green and red. The national one.
I knew what that flag could mean in certain hands. I had seen it waved from car windows at the edge of other marches, draped across the shoulders of men shouting things I won’t repeat from behind a line of police. A few people lowered their signs. Someone behind me muttered, “Here we go.” Beside me, Dani tightened her grip on her pole, and I felt myself do the sum that years of small hostilities had taught me: flag, man, doorway. Danger. I felt it in my shoulders before I thought it.
Nobody spoke. The march bent around him like water around a stone. I watched his face as I passed. His jaw trembled. His knuckles had gone white on the cloth. He didn’t shout or move. He only kept standing there, looking at us the way you look at something you are trying to reach and do not know how.
That was when I saw what I had missed. He wasn’t holding the flag like a weapon. He was holding it like a question.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Listen - title
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: VICTORIA POLICE — DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC ORDER INCIDENT REPORT: 017-B | 17 October 2026 Location: Parliament…
VICTORIA POLICE — DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC ORDER
INCIDENT REPORT: 017-B | 17 October 2026
Location: Parliament Square | Reporting Officer: Constable Daniel Reeves, Badge 0417
Incident classification: Public assembly | Status: DRAFT — Pending review
14:02 — INITIAL OBSERVATION
OFFICIAL REPORT — DRAFT
Approximately 213 individuals participated in a peaceful gathering outside Parliament Square to protest
alleged government negligence following a factory collapse. Protesters were instructed to disperse in
accordance with public safety regulations. The crowd remained at the location.
PRIVATE RECORD — UNSUBMITTED
There were 213. I counted them because I had nothing else to do.
Most carried cardboard signs. Some held photographs. A woman in a yellow coat clutched a picture of a
boy no older than seventeen. Their chanting rose and fell against the barricades. I could hear the noise,
but not the words. Or perhaps I had not tried.
We had been instructed to observe. Not engage. Not respond. Certainly not listen.
14:17 — ESCALATION
OFFICIAL REPORT — DRAFT
Several demonstrators questioned police instructions to disperse. One female protester approached the
barricade carrying a cardboard sign. No immediate physical threat was observed.
PRIVATE RECORD — UNSUBMITTED
She could not have been older than seventeen. Her sign read: MY FATHER DESERVED TO COME
HOME.
She asked whether we had children. Nobody answered. I told her to move. She asked why. I repeated
the instruction. She repeated the question.
I had been trained for seventeen weeks to control a crowd. Nobody had taught me how to listen to one.
“Please,” she said.
I heard her. I chose not to answer.
14:32 — USE OF FORCE
OFFICIAL REPORT — DRAFT
At approximately 14:32, an officer initiated contact with a female demonstrator attempting to remain at
the barricade. The individual sustained an injury during the interaction. The injured protester was
subsequently removed from the area.
PRIVATE RECORD — UNSUBMITTED
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: title: Small Acts, Big Wins Stimulus:…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 95%: Small Acts, Big Wins On October 7th, 2023, missiles were fired once again. Throughout history, meaningful…
Small Acts, Big Wins
On October 7th, 2023, missiles were fired once again.
Throughout history, meaningful change has rarely begun with silence and capacity. It has begun with protest. With making those small acts to achieve those big wins. Protest emerges when injustice is no longer tolerable. When silence becomes complicity. On December 16th, 2023, I learned that protest is not simply an act of opposition, but a moral response to injustice. It is not just about demanding that others listen. It is about refusing to let someone's suffering go unseen because it is difficult to look at. Changing the world starts with helping the next person who comes in need of it.
The Israel-Palestine war is an all-standing geopolitical conflict involving governments disputing over rightful land ownership. Both parties have deep religious and historical ties to the same piece of land ; the result of this deep desire for control has resulted in great suffering and destruction for all. As Emmeline Pankhurst once said “When you have warfare, things happen;people suffer; the noncombatants as well as the combatants". Civilian lives are lost because people in power choose to oppress. When human suffering is reduced to numbers, it becomes easy to forget that behind each statistic is a person enduring those barbaric conditions. I implore you, do not choose the path of ignorance.
As civilian death tolls began to rise, news of the conflict naturally made headlines worldwide. However, coverage was often inconsistent, politically cautious, selective and muted the scale of human suffering. Media narratives have the power to teach us what to believe, but also, what to overlook. At this point in the war, Gaza was deteriorating, marches became a weekly occurrence, reflecting the growing public outrage. Palestinians were statistics. Protesters were seen as a threat. A “take over of the immigrants”. Collective voice transformed public grief into public resistance, refusing to be silent became a moral obligation. People had no choice but to make those small acts fighting against oppression.
On December 16th, 2023 my family and I gathered along Queen street amongst thousands to march for the freedom of Palestine. The atmosphere was heavy with grief yet energized by collective purpose, to speak out. We were going to be the voices of those who no longer possessed the freedom to speak for themselves. For those whose bodies and voices were buried under rubble. We decided to take the small acts for those who couldn't achieve the big win for themselves.
Our flags were dancing in the wind. Placards reading ‘Free Palestine’ rising above the crowds. Our keffiyehs on our heads. We were going to be heard.