VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Create a piece that relates to…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 97.5%: Dear Mẹ, I came straight from the office. I walked in still wearing the day, still carrying three unread…
Dear Mẹ,
I came straight from the office. I walked in still wearing the day, still carrying three unread emails and a meeting I was quietly rehearsing for tomorrow, and I sat down beside your bed and opened my laptop before I had even properly looked at you.
You didn't say anything. You looked at me the way you always look at me — like I am still seven years old, slightly rumpled, slightly too serious — and reached over and tucked the collar of my shirt where it had folded in on itself. One hand, deliberate, the way you have done ten thousand times without being asked. Like caring for me is not something you do but something you are.
I went back to my laptop. I am telling you this so you know I almost missed it.
It started quietly. I heard it the way I hear most things lately: distantly, as background, as weather happening to other people.
Then you turned toward it.
You just stopped — stopped resting, which I have never once seen you do without looking slightly guilty — and turned your face toward the window and looked at the rain the way I have not looked at anything in longer than I can remember. With your whole attention. With something that, from where I was sitting, looked almost like relief.
I closed the laptop.
You have never been good at resting. I know this because I have watched you my whole life move from one task to the next without pause, without complaint, without ever suggesting that any of it was too much. You came to this country at twenty-six with two suitcases and a daughter not yet born and you worked, Mẹ — you worked in the way your mother worked and her mother before that, women who understood that stillness was not something to be inhabited but something to be survived on the way to the next necessary thing. You measured worth in what you produced before the day ended. You treated rest like a debt you were always slightly behind on.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: "Big wins, Small acts" ; Framework…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 70%: “Small Acts, Big Wins” Stimulus 2: Stimulus 3: “And now my voice is louder than ever. Louder because people…
“Small Acts, Big Wins”
Stimulus 2:
Stimulus 3: “And now my voice is louder than ever. Louder because people have joined me and together, we make a chorus, standing up for what we believe’
Australian Prime Minster Kevin Rudd claims Australia as being the “one of the safest countries in the world” for international students. I too did the small act of believing such a statement and packed my life in a suitcase and moved to a foreign country to chase my dreams, leaving everything behind, a small act to achieve a big win. Thousands of other Indian students believed that. However, the streets of Melbourne and Sydney speak otherwise. It’s time for Melbourne to speak upon the attacks on its trains, streets, and suburbs in which students such as I can afford to live.
As of late 2008 and 2009, there have been approximately 70 victims of attacks on Indian student alone in Victoria. Bashings. Stabbings. Gunpoint Robberies. Racial Comments. Sourabh Sharma set alight in a car, Ranjodh Singh lost an eye, Shravan Kumar stabbed with a screwdriver at a party putting him into a coma. Students being beaten up by teenagers on trains. These aren’t just statistics, this is the reality of the 97,000 Indian students enrolled in Australia, who choose Australia as their home to build a future, yet now live in the fear of being attacked on their way back from work, Uni, local shopping centers, and at bus stops and train stations. Yet for months, there have been no action taken by the Victorian government and have been told “...there are acts of violences every day” and these attacks are merely crimes of opportunity as Indian students look “vulnerable”. Random. Not racially motivated. Move on.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: This is a REFLECTIVE COMMENTARY PIECE…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 70%: The purpose of my historical fiction is to incite inspiration to protest, not just in the context of the Gen-Z…
The purpose of my historical fiction is to incite inspiration to protest, not just in the context of the Gen-Z youth in Kenya, but as a larger message to convey that fear cannot prevent initiating change. I believe overcoming fear of Kenya’s parliament leaders allows the Genz youth to arise together, inflicting a shift in Kenya for themselves.
To explain the historical timeline of the finance bill protests, based on my own experiences of listening, reading and witnessing the Kenya Finance Bill unfold in 2024 from Australia. I aimed to express my deep concern of the future for the people of Kenya due to the lack of moral responsibility from political leaders in Kenya, evident through governmental corruption and schemes driven by hunger for power and money.
From the perspective of First Daughter Charlene, who is purely fictional and in reality, President Ruto’s daughter didn’t express her opinions on the Kenya Finance Bill. I chose to use Charlene’s non-chronological diary entries to communicate the essential need for documenting and sharing recounts of events that shaped effective protest. Day 1, Day 4 and Day 6 of these diary entries included the provocation “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek”. I intended to create this motif for my diary entries to not only create a sense of cohesion, but also to place my Genz youth audience in Kenya and around the world who were inspired to feel a collective urge ‘to rise together’. Thus, aligning well with the title and supporting the framework of protesting for change.
I was inspired by Emmeline Pankhurst's own "soldier" metaphor in her Freedom or Death speech in the way that it influenced the extended metaphor of Charlene being involved in a ‘battlefield’ both physically, as seen in Day 6, “the air was thick with ozone and the cries of the dying”, and psychologically, as seen in Day 2, “now my consciousness is a battlefield of emotions”, evoking the notion that this protest wasn’t just widespread around Kenya but life-threating for everyone involved too.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: This is a REFLECTIVE COMMENTARY PIECE…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 67.5%: The purpose of my historical fiction is to incite inspiration to protest, not just in the context of the…
The purpose of my historical fiction is to incite inspiration to protest, not just in the context of the Gen-Z youth in Kenya, but as a larger message to convey that fear cannot prevent initiating change. I believe overcoming fear of Kenya’s parliament leaders allows the Genz youth to arise together, inflicting a shift in Kenya for themselves.
To explain the historical timeline of the finance bill protests, based on my own experiences of listening, reading and witnessing the Kenya Finance Bill unfold in 2024 from Australia. I aimed to express my deep concern of the future for the people of Kenya due to the lack of moral responsibility from political leaders in Kenya, evident through governmental corruption and schemes driven by hunger for power and money.
From the perspective of First Daughter Charlene, who is purely fictional and in reality, President Ruto’s daughter didn’t express her opinions on the Kenya Finance Bill. I chose to use Charlene’s non-chronological diary entries to communicate the essential need for documenting and sharing recounts of events that shaped effective protest. In Day 1 of these diary entries with the provocation “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek”. I intended to create this motif for my diary entries to not only create a sense of cohesion, but also, placing my youth audience in Kenya and around the world who were inspired to feel a collective urge ‘to rise together’. Thus, aligning well with the title and supporting the framework of protesting for change.
I was inspired by Emmeline Pankhurst's own "soldier" metaphor in her Freedom or Death speech in the way that it influenced the extended metaphor of Charlene being involved in a ‘battlefield’ both physically, as seen in Day 6, “the air was thick with ozone and the cries of the dying”, and psychologically, as seen in Day 2, “now my consciousness is a battlefield of emotions”, evoking the notion that this protest wasn’t just widespread around Kenya but life-threating for everyone involved too.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: This is a REFLECTIVE COMMENTARY PIECE…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 67.5%: The purpose of my historical fiction is to incite inspiration to protest, not just in the context of the…
The purpose of my historical fiction is to incite inspiration to protest, not just in the context of the Gen-Z youth in Kenya, but as a larger message to convey that fear cannot prevent initiating change. I believe overcoming fear of Kenya’s parliament leaders allows the Genz youth to arise together, inflicting a shift in Kenya for themselves.
To explain the historical timeline of the finance bill protests, based on my own experiences of listening, reading and witnessing the Kenya Finance Bill unfold in 2024 from Australia. I aimed to express my deep concern of the future for the people of Kenya due to the lack of moral responsibility from political leaders in Kenya, evident through governmental corruption and schemes driven by hunger for power and money.
I chose to write this historical fiction in the form of a short story, to explain the drastic consequences of corruption and lack of integrity within the government of the republic of Kenya leading to revolt and death, intending my historical fiction to be directed towards Genz youth in Kenya and middle-class youth around the world who face oppression from their own government, and are willing to arise to cause change for the betterment of their people.
From the perspective of First Daughter Charlene, who is purely fictional and in reality, President Ruto’s daughter didn’t express her opinions on the Kenya Finance Bill, I chose to use Charlene’s non-chronological diary entries to communicate the essential need for documenting and sharing recounts of events that shaped effective protest. In Day 1 of these diary entries with the provocation “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek”. I intended to create this motif for my diary entries to not only create a sense of cohesion, placing my youth audience in Kenya and around the world who were inspired to feel a collective urge ‘to rise together’. Thus, aligning well with the title and supporting the framework of protesting for change.
I was inspired by Emmeline Pankhurst's own "soldier" metaphor in her Freedom or Death speech in the way that it influenced the extended metaphor of Charlene being involved in a ‘battlefield’ both physically, as seen in Day 6, “the air was thick with ozone and the cries of the dying”, and psychologically, as seen in Day 2, “now my consciousness is a battlefield of emotions”, evoking the notion that this protest wasn’t just widespread around Kenya but life-threating for everyone involved too.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: This is a REFLECTIVE COMMENTARY PIECE…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 70%: The purpose of my historical fiction is to incite inspiration to protest, not just in the context of the Gen-Z…
The purpose of my historical fiction is to incite inspiration to protest, not just in the context of the Gen-Z youth in Kenya, but as a larger message to convey that fear cannot prevent initiating change. I believe overcoming fear of Kenya’s parliament leaders allows the Genz youth to arise together, inflicting a shift in Kenya for themselves.
To explain the historical timeline of the finance bill protests, based on my own experiences of listening, reading and witnessing the Kenya Finance Bill unfold in 2024 from Australia. To express my deep concern of the future for the people of Kenya due to the lack of moral responsibility from political leaders in Kenya, evident through governmental corruption and schemes driven by hunger for power and money.
I chose to write this historical fiction in the form of a short story, to explain the drastic consequences of corruption and lack of integrity within the government of the republic of Kenya leading to revolt and death, intending my historical fiction to be directed towards Genz youth in Kenya and middle-class youth around the world who face oppression from their own government, and are willing to arise to cause change for the betterment of their people.
From the perspective of First Daughter Charlene, who is purely fictional and in reality, President Ruto’s daughter didn’t express her opinions on the Kenya Finance Bill, I chose to use Charlene’s non-chronological diary entries to communicate the essential need for documenting and sharing recounts of events that shaped effective protest. In Day 1 of these diary entries with the provocation “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek”. I intended to create this motif for my diary entries to not only create a sense of cohesion, placing my youth audience in Kenya and around the world who were inspired to feel a collective urge ‘to rise together’, aligning well with the title and supporting the framework of protesting for change.
I was inspired by Emmeline Pankhurst's own "soldier" metaphor in her Freedom or Death speech in the way that it influenced the extended metaphor of Charlene being a involved in a ‘battlefield’ both physically, as seen in Day 6, “the air was thick with ozone and the cries of the dying”, and psychologically, a seen in Day 2, “now my consciousness is a battlefield of emotions”, evoking the notion that this protest wasn’t just widespread around Kenya but life-threating for everyone involved too.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title 1: “Silence changes nothing.”
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 67.5%: Noise. That’s what people think protest sounds like. Crowds pressing forward, voices rising over one another,…
Noise.
That’s what people think protest sounds like. Crowds pressing forward, voices rising over one another, something impossible to ignore. It’s loud, public, undeniable. The kind of thing that demands attention whether people want to give it or not.
But not all protests sound like that.
Some don’t sound like anything at all.
Mine didn’t.
At least, not at first.
It stayed contained within the walls of a place that was supposed to feel like home, caught somewhere between what was said and what never quite made it out. At first, it didn’t feel important. It felt small. Just another argument across the dinner table, another moment of being spoken over, of watching my own sentence trail off unfinished as someone else kept talking. There was no crowd, no sign, no clear beginning or end. Just tension that lingered long after the conversation had finished, in the silence of plates being cleared and chairs scraping against the floor.I didn’t put my chair in, As I walked away the silence stayed but the chair was moved back into place.
So I stayed quiet.
Because silence is easier, at least in the beginning. It avoids the conflict, delays the consequences, keeps everything from tipping too far in one direction. People talk about speaking up as if it’s simple, as if it’s something you can choose without losing anything in return. But there’s always a cost. It exists in the pause after you say something that can’t be taken back, in the way the air shifts, in the way familiar spaces suddenly feel unfamiliar.
For a long time, that cost didn’t seem worth it.
It was easier to let things stay the same, even if “the same” meant feeling unheard. Easier to convince myself that it didn’t matter, that it was just how things were. Maybe silence can feel like control when you don’t yet realise how much it allows to remain unchanged.
But eventually, it stopped feeling like control.
It started to feel like weight. Like carrying words around for so long that they became heavier each time I swallowed them back down. Conversations became rehearsals in my head instead of things I actually allowed myself to say.
There wasn’t a single defining moment where everything changed. No sudden courage, no perfectly constructed sentence that fixed everything all at once. Just a gradual shift .
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: title: Conflict is Caring Stimulus i.…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: My eyes flutter open to a sky too blue. For a moment, I think I am home. The light is clean. Gentle. Then the…
My eyes flutter open to a sky too blue.
For a moment, I think I am home. The light is clean. Gentle. Then the smell arrives. Metal and smoke.
The illusion collapses.
A sole of a boot is thrust inches from my face.
Dirt is pressed deep into the grooves, and razor fragments of grass carry the stench of the soil beneath us.
The boot does not move.
My hands start to tremble when I realise why.
Beyond the visible horizon, a group of soldiers strain to lift a flagpole upright. Their uniforms blend with the earth as if they are already part of it. They raise the flagpole high above their heads and press the pole down hard, forcing it into the soil.
I remember seeing that flag.
The first time I saw it was stitched on my father’s old army uniform.
I remember when my fingers first met the meticulous embroidery of the fifty white stars. My father said this stood for unity. When the texture shifted into smooth, vertical strokes, he said the stripes represented hardiness and valour.
He stood taller with every word. His voice grew as he squeezed my shoulder, then thumped it in a deliberate rhythm.
It was then when I understood the meaning of the flag was greater than life.
But he did not speak of weight.
The heaviness of a symbol worn with the heart.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Conflict of perspectives can lead to…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: Under the glistening lights of the astronomical “Santiago Bernabeu” proudly stands a club gilded in pride and…
Under the glistening lights of the astronomical “Santiago Bernabeu” proudly stands a club gilded in pride and utmost dominance. Throughout the years, Real Madrid has unconditionally believed in the “Galactico” system: A power system that relies on individual brilliance of a player rather than a cohesive unit that works for each other. However, the team back then always had one shared goal, and that is to come out triumphant no matter the severity of the price; blood and sweat were mere sacrificial catalysts for the sake of victory. However, modern day football has undergone an evolutionary pathway of tactical brilliance, one that brings out the best of the whole unit instead of a sole figurehead. This is the system that Carlo Ancelotti, head coach of Real Madrid has sought to build over the years. Albeit, one man stands in his way and that is Kylian Mbappe, the messiah of football, the successor of greats, one that has set eyes on the most pristine individual awards. A precedent that causes not only a clash of perspectives but a power imbalance that is slowly eroding the locker room.
The architect of division
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: a letter about play
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 77.5%: 20/7/2021 Dear Mum, It’s me again, just thought I would check in. The past few months have been a lot to say…
20/7/2021
Dear Mum,
It’s me again, just thought I would check in. The past few months have been a lot to say the least. But we are starting to find a new rhythm to our days without her. Sam is almost 5 now, I guess the saying they grow up fast is true. Most days he barely asks about her. Others, he cries all night.
He has grown so much you wouldn’t even recognize him, that’s what makes me sad. When Sam was born, I imagined a perfect life for the little guy. A life where his mum was still around and he got to grow up knowing his grandparents, am I doing something wrong as a parent? I mean the only person Sam has is me and I’m barely holding it together as it is.
He was outside again today. Covered in mud from head to toe, knees scraped and face grubby. He had been climbing the highest tree in our yard. You know the one? Its twisted branches stretch up so high they look like they go on forever. Sam gets the biggest smile on his face whenever he finds a massive tree to climb. He climbs higher and higher. Meanwhile I stand at the bottom trying to keep my heart from beating out of my chest. I wish I could say that watching him climb trees fills me with joy. It does, sometimes. But more often than not, I find myself picturing his foot slipping from a branch. Time stands still. The risk seems so great. I can imagine it while writing this letter, little Sam on the ground screaming in pain. That would break me. I promised myself I would never return back to the hospital. There would be no holding it together after that.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Topic: Legacy around the framework of…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: When we wake up As a child, I would wake up to the steady tapping of someone knocking on my door. I would…
When we wake up
As a child, I would wake up to the steady tapping of someone knocking on my door. I would slowly open my eyes, salvaging the last few seconds of darkness before my vision focused. Wanting just two more minutes in the comfort of my bed.
“Wake up, beta. There are two cats outside!”
That mention of the fluffy creatures I adored so much ever since I was a child always had me jumping out of bed, shuffling out onto the street, holding onto my grandfather’s hand with the vice-like grip that a three-year-old could muster.
Nana was the symbol of strength to me. He would always wake up at the brink of sunrise, pray and then get to work — packing lunches for my mom and me to take with us. Driving me to pre-school with me huge backpack slung across his back, comically small and purple on him. I always remember him smelling of the food he cooked for us the night before, his greying hair combed neatly in a side part.
I always saw him smiling. Despite how much my mom cried to him about her marriage. No matter how many times he walked with me in his arms, plucking leaves off bushes I found interesting.
He felt safe. He felt like happiness. He felt like a warm sun, shining on me and bathing me in its warmth.
When we get tired
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: The best way to predict the future is…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: Who are we if not performers? And what is living if not performing? Would you squeal at spiders if no one was…
Who are we if not performers? And what is living if not performing? Would you squeal at spiders if no one was watching? Would you smile in a room by yourself?
Our feelings of joy, ambition and hesitation, are all just for an act. We constantly rehearse our dreams, improvise our failures and revise our identities. Life is not just a stage, but a rehearsal hall, a change room, a script still being written.
The biggest stage we’ll ever stand on is our own life. From the moment we’re born, we’re cast into roles we didn’t audition for. We eat and we grow so our parents feel fulfilled. We study and work to ‘contribute to society’. We love and sacrifice so others don’t have to. We perform not just the applause, but for approval, for belonging, for others.
Yet there are moment, fleeting and temporary, where the mask slips. We step out of the costume stitched by expectations and step into something raw, something authentic. These moments feel like freedom. But are they? Are they not just another act, that we convince ourselves is ‘authentic’.
When did living become so rehearsed?
“I need to lose weight”
“My hair is terrible”
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: mark my commentary, for personal…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 92.5%: This piece explores a significant turning point in my life. It follows my experience with my mother’s cancer…
This piece explores a significant turning point in my life. It follows my experience with my mother’s cancer diagnosis and my journey of acceptance and healing through a series of vignettes. The purpose of this piece is to reflect on my past experiences with cancer and also examine the idea that with every hardship comes ease, and it is an opportunity for growth as well. I used varying tones in each vignette, starting with a hopeless and resentful one, to a mature and enlightened one, to signify the growth I experienced throughout the years and how my experience has both negatively and positively impacted my life. This piece is targeted particularly to youth who have also experienced a loved one being sick or have been impacted by cancer in any way, through recounting my journey. I chose to write in the first person and past tense to fully focus on the authentic thoughts I had during those significant parts of my life, allowing those who have had similar experiences to connect with what's happening in each part of my creative piece.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Oppression Editorial
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 97.5%: For over a hundred years, dawn at the Shrine of Remembrance has been a place of heavy, sacred silence. It is…
For over a hundred years, dawn at the Shrine of Remembrance has been a place of heavy, sacred silence. It is a moment where the nation stops to breathe and remember. But on April 25, 2026, that silence didn't just break, it shattered. As religious and political leaders stepped forward during the Welcome to Country, they weren’t met with the usual polite nods of the quiet, reverent Australian. Instead, they were met with a sound that has become the new anthem of this generation: a loud, unfiltered boo. To the media, it was a 'disgrace.' To the politicians, it was 'disrespectful.' But to a generation watching Indigenous freedom be treated as an afterthought for more than two centuries, it was a confirmation. It was the sound of a country waking up to the reality that when you leave historical wounds untreated, they don't heal; they fester and become infected with the kind of oppression we saw at the Shrine.
The government is quick to condemn the rebels in black shirts, yet they remain silently involved in the system that encourages them. How can we be surprised that hate groups feel comfortable at the Shrine when we still allow controversial leaders to stand boldly in our parliament? We are a nation that protects the oppressor while leaving the living victims of that oppression to drown in a 'welfare system' they have no control over. The hypocrisy lies in a government that will spend millions of taxpayer dollars on a 'Voice' referendum only to let the majority shut it down, effectively telling every extremist in the country that Indigenous authority is up for debate. This is, without a doubt, an uncomfortable truth society refuses to confront. The 'shadow of oppression' isn't a ghost from the past—it’s a living nightmare that flourishes in our streets while the cameras are on.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Oppression Editorial
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 95%: For over a hundred years, dawn at the Shrine of Remembrance has been a place of heavy, sacred silence. It is a…
For over a hundred years, dawn at the Shrine of Remembrance has been a place of heavy, sacred silence. It is a moment where the nation stops to breathe and remember. But on April 25, 2026, that silence didn't just break, it shattered. As religious and political leaders stepped forward during the Welcome to Country, they weren’t met with the usual polite nods of the quiet, reverent Australian. Instead, they were met with a sound that has become the new anthem of this generation: a loud, unfiltered boo. To the media, it was a 'disgrace.' To the politicians, it was 'disrespectful.' But to a generation watching Indigenous freedom be treated as an afterthought for more than two centuries, it was a confirmation. It was the sound of a country waking up to the reality that when you leave historical wounds untreated, they don't heal; they fester and become infected with the kind of oppression we saw at the Shrine.
The government is quick to condemn the rebels in black shirts, yet they remain silently involved in the system that encourages them. How can we be surprised that hate groups feel comfortable at the Shrine when we still allow controversial leaders to stand boldly in our parliament? We are a nation that protects the oppressor while leaving the living victims of that oppression to drown in a 'welfare system' they have no control over. The hypocrisy lies in a government that will spend millions of taxpayer dollars on a 'Voice' referendum only to let the majority shut it down, effectively telling every extremist in the country that Indigenous authority is up for debate. Without a doubt an uncomfortable truth society refuses to confront. The 'shadow of oppression' isn't a ghost from the past—it’s a living nightmare that flourishes in our streets while the cameras are on.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Oppression Editorial
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: The Australian Gazette, April 27, 2026 For over a hundred years, dawn at the Shrine of Remembrance has been a…
The Australian Gazette, April 27, 2026
For over a hundred years, dawn at the Shrine of Remembrance has been a place of heavy, sacred silence. It is a moment where the nation stops to breathe and remember. But on April 25, 2026, that silence didn't just break, it shattered. As religious and political leaders stepped forward during the Welcome to Country, they weren’t met with the usual polite nods of the quiet, reverent Australian. Instead, they were met with a sound that has become the new anthem of this generation: a loud, unfiltered boo. To the media, it was a 'disgrace.' To the politicians, it was 'disrespectful.' But to a generation watching Indigenous freedom be treated as an afterthought for more than two centuries, it was a confirmation. It was the sound of a country waking up to the reality that when you leave historical wounds untreated, they don't heal; they fester and become infected with the kind of oppression we saw at the Shrine.
The government is quick to condemn the rebels in black shirts, yet they remain silently involved in the system that encourages them. How can we be surprised that hate groups feel comfortable at the Shrine when we still allow controversial leaders to stand boldly in our parliament? We are a nation that protects the oppressor while leaving the living victims of that oppression to drown in a 'welfare system' they have no control over. The hypocrisy lies in a government that will spend millions of taxpayer dollars on a 'Voice' referendum only to let the majority shut it down, effectively telling every extremist in the country that Indigenous authority is up for debate. Without a doubt, this is the truth no one wants to protest. The 'shadow of oppression' isn't a ghost from the past—it’s a living nightmare that flourishes in our streets while the cameras are on.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Oppression Editorial
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: For over a hundred years, dawn at the Shrine of Remembrance has been a place of heavy, sacred silence. It is a…
For over a hundred years, dawn at the Shrine of Remembrance has been a place of heavy, sacred silence. It is a moment where the nation stops to breathe and remember. But on April 25, 2026, that silence didn't just break, it shattered. As religious and political leaders stepped forward during the Welcome to Country, they weren’t met with the usual polite nods of the quiet, reverent Australian. Instead, they were met with a sound that has become the new anthem of this generation: a loud, unfiltered boo. To the media, it was a 'disgrace.' To the politicians, it was 'disrespectful.' But to a generation watching Indigenous freedom be treated as an afterthought for more than two centuries, it was a confirmation. It was the sound of a country waking up to the reality that when you leave historical wounds untreated, they don't heal; they fester and become infected with the kind of oppression we saw at the Shrine.
The government is quick to condemn the rebels in black shirts, yet they remain silently involved in the system that encourages them. How can we be surprised that hate groups feel comfortable at the Shrine when we still allow controversial leaders to stand boldly in our parliament? We are a nation that protects the oppressor while leaving the living victims of that oppression to drown in a 'welfare system' they have no control over. The hypocrisy lies in a government that will spend millions of taxpayer dollars on a 'Voice' referendum only to let the majority shut it down, effectively telling every extremist in the country that Indigenous authority is up for debate. Without a doubt, this is the truth no one wants to protest. The 'shadow of oppression' isn't a ghost from the past—it’s a living nightmare that flourishes in our streets while the cameras are on.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Write a creative piece based on this…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 100%: All around me, vibrant hues of blue, green, orange, and everything in between coated the festival streets of…
All around me, vibrant hues of blue, green, orange, and everything in between coated the festival streets of Mumbai. There's a reason why every one of my ethnic friends suggests you come to India during Holi. It's because this is a spectacle that honestly, you can't see anywhere else in the world.
It was the good kind of hectic. Not the busy, crammed, tiring hectic I was used to, but the fun, colourful, and energetic kind. Even in Australia, the foreground of my life, with all of its stunning attributes, can anything match this day, with its stunning atmosphere and spirited colours? From what I've seen, no. That's what they don't understand. The kind of people who manage to generalise an entire nation into one bad interaction. Racists, if you will. Somehow, they rear their ugly faces everywhere. Social media, on the phone, and rarely, they get the courage to raise their sunlight-deprived faces to the shoulder of a minority and start telling a passport-wielding citizen to go back to his country. Which, as a matter of fact, he’s standing in right now.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: A Work in Progress
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: The cursor blinked, a tiny, rhythmic pulse in the digital silence of my Year 7 bedroom. It was 2020. The air…
The cursor blinked, a tiny, rhythmic pulse in the digital silence of my Year 7 bedroom. It was 2020. The air was stale from months of staying indoors during the lockdown, that familiar, stagnant atmosphere of life lived entirely through a screen. The only sound was the faint, overworked hum of my laptop fan. On one half of the screen was my Roland-Garros presentation, its animations poised and perfect. On the other was my real preparation: a stark white notepad file. It was a list of frantic, typed-out reminders—little anchors to keep me steady during my online French oral presentation. It was my secret armour, a digital talisman against the impending terror of speaking to a grid of silent, judging squares. This list, this script of self-reassurance, was my first real attempt at creating a work in progress. It was a user manual for a boy who felt like he was malfunctioning.
The presentation began. I clicked ‘share screen’ on Teams, launched into my over-rehearsed commentary on clay courts, and even committed to the silly, nasal French accent I’d practiced. I was getting through it. And then, a flicker of panic, a clumsy jab at the mouse to close an errant notification. Click. The wrong window. Not the glorious orange of Roland-Garros. The stark white of the list. My list. A wall of black text filled the screen, broadcasting my deepest anxieties to the entire French class: the world (probably) isn't going to end if you fail. one breath at a time. they're not paying attention. A heavy, suffocating silence followed. Then a muffled giggle from an unmuted mic. The Teams chat icon lit up with a furious ping, a single crying-laughing emoji appearing next to a classmate’s name. My face burned with a heat the laptop fan stood no chance of cooling. Shit.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Cost of living and how it affects…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 95%: Check yourself before you wreck yourself. You've got one minute to explain yourself! Silence is violence.…
Check yourself before you wreck yourself. You've got one minute to explain yourself!
Silence is violence. Complacency is complicity. - Meyne Wyatt: City of Gold
The cost of living is like a poison, slowly taking over your life and everyone else you know. It is affecting our capacity to be fulfilled and enjoy, and the cost to live—especially with rising tensions in the Middle East is reaching a breaking point. Because oil is such a vital ingredient in our lives, any change in the industry affects everyone. Even if you might have an electric vehicle, supermarket and tanker ships run on oil; diesel to be exact. So when the price of oil goes up, so does everything else, whether we like it or not. Meyne Wyatt once stood on a stage and told us. Silence is violence, complacency is complicity.' So, I'll only take up one minute to talk on the cost of living, how it has been impacting your life, and why the Australian government has to step in to mitigate this dilemma.
(timer starts now)
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Protest- Join the Revolution
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: We gather here today in sorrow, in grief, in reflection, mourning the long life of our Mother, who did not…
We gather here today in sorrow, in grief, in reflection, mourning the long life of our Mother, who did not pass away.
Who was killed. Slowly. By us. As we watched.
She was a mother who was life-giving, nurturing and enduring our grievances as she sustained our lifeblood. A mother that grew vocal cords that allowed us to speak through our silent mouths, a mother that condensed clouds of wisdom into our naive minds and taught us her language of protest - fire.
Our one and only Mother, Earth.
She was older than the concept of mothers, older than the word for love. Her skin of dark crumbly soil, that nested every seed we planted. Her arms were forest canopies, sheltering everything that moved or grew in the green cathedral beneath them. Her veins were rivers, running slowly and melodically towards the sea, flowing and overfilling reservoirs the way tears fill tear ducts.
When she shaped us from mud and clay, she took her time, moulded us with deep care and compassion. She did not ask to be thanked. Her palms stayed open. Wide as prairies, unclenched as a woman who has never needed to hold on because she was never afraid of losing, because she always had more to provide than we had the capacity to take.
Until we proved her wrong.
When we burned her forests, she grew them back. When we choked her skies, she sent rain to cleanse them. Even as we cut deeper, drilling the marrow from her bones, she never turned her back to us. She endured it. She was patient and resilient, never leaving any of her children behind, even if we intentionally harmed her. She was what a mother represented: Care, Comfort and Compassion.
However, unreciprocated love does not last forever.
Our Mother was dying. Slowly. Painfully.
Earth required us to unite for change.
She nudged us subtly at first. Her hair, once thick with snow, receded from the peaks of white topped mountains in thin frail streaks, desperately clinging to her scalp. Her flamboyant necklace of coral reefs, now bleached bone white. Her heartbeat, the drumming of migrating hooves across a steppe, slowly fading away as they are mercilessly poached by us humans.
But nudges don’t draw out a response.
We called her nudges natural variation. We called her warnings alarmism. We called her fevers a cycle.
So she stopped being subtle.
She sent storms that grew more violent each year, she melted ice and bloated seas.
She created floods that swallowed coastlines, droughts that cracked the earth like broken skin, set fires that turned the sky crimson and filled cities with smoke and haze.
She raised oceans that climbed against the edges of islands and cities and low-lying nations who had done the least to deserve it.
She was not being dramatic. She was protesting. Demanding us to give her attention, demanding us to join her cause.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: AOS2 Framework: 'Writing about Country
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: Between Departures Some words don't translate. Some countries don't either. Gate 14. Three hours until boarding…
Between Departures
Some words don't translate. Some countries don't either.
Gate 14. Three hours until boarding and the seat is already hard against my back. Outside the window the tarmac holds the last of the afternoon — that particular Melbourne gold that comes only in autumn, low and sideways, touching everything once before it leaves.
The man beside me is asleep. Somewhere behind, a child is working through something difficult near the vending machines. I uncap the pen. Open the notebook to the first clean page. Cross out the date at the top and find it easier without it.
The older pages I don't read back. I just find where the writing stops and begin there.
To the country that made me,
I know your mornings better than I know anything. The light coming in flat and without apology. The smell of a school oval in February — dry grass, red dust, the sound of someone's father calling out from behind a cyclone fence. My knees have your dirt in their scars.
I grew up inside you. Learned to read in you, learned to lose in you, learned the particular embarrassment of a packed lunch that didn't look like anyone else's. I sang your anthem with my hand on my chest and meant it. I still mean it, which is why I am writing this now.
But I have stood in rooms where people looked at my face and waited — past the suburb I gave them, past the school, past the football team — waited for something that would finally explain me. And I have come to understand, slowly, that loving a place and being claimed by it are not always the same thing.
Your eucalypts. The eucalypts. I notice I keep correcting myself.
What I want to say is that I have never doubted you. Only ever doubted my right to say you at all.
Somewhere over the Indian Ocean. The screen on the seat-back shows a small white plane over a large blue nothing, equidistant from everywhere it could belong.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: It is on the title "This is me" and…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: We are, by nature, fascinated by the possibility of uncovering a pre-existing self that reflects our perceived…
We are, by nature, fascinated by the possibility of uncovering a pre-existing self that reflects our perceived authentic selves and, in turn, inspires others. There is rampant admiration in society for those who pursue an innate interest and then polish it and distil it until it becomes highly noteworthy. Additionally, those who succeed in pursuing their innate interests serve as examples of self-actualisation and authenticity. Whether it be the late Steve Jobs or the current titan that is Elon Musk, we admire their embodiment of the self-actualisation concept: the notion that one can uncover their “true” self and transform it into greatness. Viewing their personal success from rags to riches, it draws us to attempt to copy the same formula. Thus, in our lifelong search for an identity, we often look up to seemingly untouchable role models and wish to simply declare, “This
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Protest - What Is Right
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 67.5%: Protest is a powerful way for society to push for what is right. Protest causes change to the worlds largest…
Protest is a powerful way for society to push for what is right. Protest causes change to the worlds largest societal issues and challenges by creating awareness on these problems through the use of media. Protest is not just to be seen, but to be heard, speaking out against issues is what brings true change to these challenges being faced. Protests are most effective when they push against the people with authority and power who have the ability to abolish and prevent societal problems.