VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: THE RULES OF THE GAME STIMULUS: We…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: THE RULES OF THE GAME THE AGE: Teen Takeover - A glimpse into the toxic sports culture plaguing sport, and…
THE RULES OF THE GAME
THE AGE: Teen Takeover - A glimpse into the toxic sports culture plaguing sport, and forcing kids outside the lines on the game they love.
When I was eight, I realised that the people around me cared more about the results that I was producing than they did for me as an actual person. That’s was I realised, sport was no longer about fun, it was about who could kick the furthest, run the fastest, win the most. A missed shot or a kick out of bounds was met with anger, and followed by silence on the way home. While a win was met with a slight smile, but not before the endless critiques. I had learnt, before I had even hit double digits, that my worth on the field had become entangled with my worth off it. The rules of sport had become simple, pressure and winning were everything.
WE DONT STOP PLAYING BECAUSE WE GROW OLD, WE STOP WHEN PLAYING NO LONGER BELONGS TO US
Allianz Australia’s recent research into junior sports in Australia found that one in three teens have pleaded with their parents to quit sport before the age of 15. When you ask them why, you won’t hear that they stopped loving the game or injury forced them into this position. You will hear one word. Pressure. These children are constantly demanded to give more than they have, car road homes are turned into lectures and incessant disappointment. Children leaving sports unhappy isn’t unlucky, it is simply symptomatic of a culture that values the scoreboard more than the kids standing in front of it. Kids do not leave the sport because they stopped loving it, but they felt as if it was no longer theirs, the logic of sport was now to perform for other people.
Realistically, it was very easy to write this off as a parenting issue. However, as much as people would like to think, this isn’t something that parents have written up and executed off of their own back. They didn’t invent these rules. They inherited them.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: The most common way people give up…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 60%: Voices Unheard To my silenced brothers and sisters joining me today as a part of the Southern Christian…
Voices Unheard
To my silenced brothers and sisters joining me today as a part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). For 200 years we have been censored. For 200 years we have been treated as subhuman. For 200 years we have been stripped of our voice. But for no longer, as the unity we've found in each other is what strengthens us to overcome the governing body structured to lawfully outcast the black minority under their reign. Relinquishing the previous ideas about radical protest in stunning scenes only weakens our united movement. Therefore, we must refine our position within the sociopolitical scene in a peaceful protest to sustain our congruent position in society.
Join me in taking the tape off each other's mouths, as it is instrumental as black people, that we do not succumb to neutrality, in giving up our own power we unknowingly rob our neighbour of theirs. As a part of the SCLC we all will make our voices heard and our faces seen in the eyes of the government and make real change… finally seen as equals… equals in the innate human dignity every single one of us is born with the right to.
The public censoring of our people disempowers those who bear witness to the disgusting abuse of power inflicted upon poor individuals who were brave enough to break their silence.
The ingrained social construct of a hierarchy built on race solely to create a false sense of power for our oppressors, drastically undermines the innate rights black people are born with.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: ‘The choice’ Stimulus 1 ‘No two…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: The choice The house on Miller Street was a container for a ghost life I once believed was permanent. For…
The choice
The house on Miller Street was a container for a ghost life I once believed was permanent. For years, Julian had been the constant; he had trailed behind like a loyal shadow, his footsteps matching mine with a rhythmic predictability that felt as essential as breathing. We were children of the same sun-drenched afternoons, unaware that our orbits were slowly drifting apart, pulled by forces we were too young to understand. Back then, the future seemed like a singular path, a paved road stretching forward with clear signposts. We had drawn our lives in crayon on the pavement: the same school, the same street, the same small promises that seemed too ordinary to ever break.
There was comfort in that certainty. We mistook proximity for permanence, believing that because we had always walked beside one another, we would continue to do so. But the landscape has a way of shifting beneath your feet, rearranging the horizon when you are least prepared. As the years bled into one another, the silence between us began to thicken. Time was a quiet tide, gradually pulling us towards different shores. It did not happen in a single, cinematic moment of betrayal or shouting, but in the gradual erosion of shared language. We were speaking the same words, but the definitions had drifted, anchored in different realities. Julian still spoke about the future we had once sketched together as though it were waiting patiently at the end of the road. I listened. Sometimes, I even smiled. That was the cruelest part: I could still remember why I had loved the life we had imagined.
I stand now at the threshold of my own departure — the physical manifestation of a choice I have been making in increments for a decade. The suitcase sits by the door, a solid, heavy symbol of finality. Outside, the sky is bruised with violet, the last light bleeding slowly across the horizon as though the day itself is reluctant to disappear. Rain gathers against the windows, each droplet sliding downward in uncertain paths. I watch them merge and separate, and wonder whether our lives have done the same. Is there truly a moment where we choose our direction, or do we simply wake one day to discover that the road beneath our feet is no longer the one we intended to take?
I look in the mirror, searching for the person who walked with Julian on those summer days, but the reflection seems fractured by the dim light. The lines around my eyes hold the geography of lessons learned in isolation. I remember the wreckage of last winter — the way the world seemed to splinter beneath the weight of expectations I could no longer carry. I had spent so long trying to fit myself into a future designed by other people that I had begun to disappear inside it, like ink dissolving in water. There had been a voice then, faint but persistent, urging me to find some direction amidst all the change and the storm I had weathered.
I ignored it.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: creative piece- personal journeys
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: Nobody noticed when the white swan disappeared. The black swan did not look like an enemy when I first met her.…
Nobody noticed when the white swan disappeared.
The black swan did not look like an enemy when I first met her. She did not arrive violently or announce herself as something to fear. She simply appeared, quietly, in the spaces between my thoughts. At first, she sounded almost indistinguishable from me. She spoke in the language of ambition, discipline and self-improvement, offering small suggestions that felt more like opportunities than warnings. You could be better. I believed her. Why wouldn’t I? The white swan had always wanted to be better.
She was there when I looked in the mirror and found something to correct. She was there when food became something to think about long after the plate had been cleared. She was there in the strange satisfaction of denying myself something I wanted, and in the guilt that followed when I did not. She made my body feel like a problem with a solution I had not yet found. Yet none of this seemed frightening. The black swan had a way of making fear sound like discipline.
What I did not understand was that she did not need to force the white one away. She only needed to make her doubt herself. Little by little, certainty became hesitation. Satisfaction became inadequacy. Thoughts that once passed through my mind began circling it, returning again and again until they felt less like thoughts and more like facts. The white swan was still visible to everyone else. She still laughed, studied, talked and sat at the dinner table. But inside, something had shifted. I was becoming quieter in places no one could see.
The black swan was patient. She understood that control is most convincing when it disguises itself as choice. She turned ordinary moments into tests I felt I had to pass, until decisions that once required no thought became negotiations I could not escape. I became increasingly conscious of what I ate, how I looked, what I believed I should have done differently. There was always another standard waiting for me, another way I could have been more disciplined, more deserving, more in control. Every time I reached it, she quietly moved the finish line.
And the cruelest part was that I thought I was choosing her.
The black swan had made secrecy feel like safety. The less other people knew, the less they could interfere; the less they could interfere, the more control I believed I had. I became skilled at making something enormous look insignificant. A thought could consume an entire day and still be dismissed with a shrug. A fear could sit beside me at dinner and remain invisible to everyone else. I could laugh, answer questions and carry on as though nothing had changed.
Nobody saw a black swan.
They saw me.
That was exactly how she wanted it.
The black swan knew she would never be trusted if she arrived looking like an enemy. So she borrowed the white swan’s face. She spoke in the same voice, carried the same ambitions and wore the same confidence. She did not ask me to become someone unrecognisable. Instead, she took the things I valued most and quietly changed what they meant.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: friendly games
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 95%: We were both the competitive kind. The slight creak of the floorboard from his steps had woken me, but it was…
We were both the competitive kind.
The slight creak of the floorboard from his steps had woken me, but it was the curious energy radiating from his glimmering eyes that made me instinctively alert. Like how the streams of sunlight would beam through dissipating clouds in the aftermath of a storm, his warm brown eyes were peeking through wild tufts of jet-black hair, the same ones that formed patches around my ears and body. He was barely a boy then, yet he was standing so assertively on his short chubby legs that I couldn’t help but feel challenged to stare back and wag my tail furiously.
He looked at me some more before pointing a stubby finger.
“Mummy,” his jumbled words clumsily rolled out of his mouth. “I wan dat one.”
Upon hearing him, a man turned and saw me lying on the cushion.
“Oh him? That’s Peter Pan, he’s quiet now because he was just napping.”
A smile stretched across his lips.
“But don’t you worry, Kiddo, he’s one energetic puppy.”
Soon, I would learn that everything was a game between me and Victor, and out of all those games we would play, tug of war was my favourite.
Every time I sank my canines into the tight crevices of the rope, I felt the adrenaline rushing through my veins, the thumps of my pulsating heart. I could still vividly remember the bursts of energy that would flood through my muscles during those games, how I would stretch back, claws deep in the dirt, mouth clamped ferociously around the knot, as I tugged at the rope with every drop of strength and intensity I could muster.
Our tense competition was evident through the tally of victories kept on the chalkboard, but the short columns of grainy white lines didn’t mean much to me. It was the thrill of the game, and Victor’s bright laughter sprinkled in after each round that kept me wanting to play again and again.
In one of our earliest matches, I pulled so hard that the impact left Victor stumbling and falling backwards onto the grass. As I bounded towards him with the rope still in my mouth, excited for another round, I saw his small face, twisted with angry streaks of mud and eyebrows creased in annoyance.
“No more, Peter, I don’t wanna play anymore.” Tears were welling in his eyes and slowly rolling around the curve of his cheek. “You always win; it’s no fun.”
And then he left with heavy stomps in his trail.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: “The distance between” “Sometimes the…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 82.5%: A tumultuous sheet of grey washes over the sky, undulating, rolling and impenetrable. The sky begins to…
A tumultuous sheet of grey washes over the sky, undulating, rolling and impenetrable.
The sky begins to darken and a small village is engulfed in shadow and not too far away, up upon a small unremarkable hill, a boy no older than the age of 15 carries his washing back inside before the rain gets to it. People don’t know how he got there or why, all they know about him are the rumors being spread around town. “He lives all by himself,” some say, others talk about how he grows his own food but the general sentiment centres around the idea “He must be so lonely without anyone to talk to.”
The boy knows about their conversations, their whispering drifts up to his small mundane wooden shack, down through the chimney and into his delicate alabaster ears. As the sun begins to fade under the horizon and the fire starts to burn low, their murmurings become clearer. “My brother said he watches us from up there,” “What does he do all day,” “What a weirdo.” The boy had become used to these words, their arrival each night filling him with an unusual sense of familiarity. At first he wondered what they meant and he would open his windows, glancing down at their small houses. He searched for the people talking about him but he never found them. From the top of the hill, the village seemed so distant and the boy felt so alienated but that was all he ever knew so how could he complain? He convinced himself that they were afraid of him, that he wasn't welcomed. At least, that's what he told himself.
Was the boy on the hill, really a boy on a hill though?
Maybe he was a boy who sat alone at the back of the classroom.
The hill wasn’t really a hill either, it was the distance between him and everyone else. His wooden shack was the seat he ate lunch at, lodged in the corner of the normally deserted library. A place where his existence could become virtually erased. No-one existed in his reality and he didn't in anyone else's. It was easier for him like this, he didn’t have to worry about the obtrusive stares of others, their opinions, their judgement. He didn't have to worry about any of it.
No-one else existed in his private slice of the universe except him and the whispers.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: “The distance between” “Sometimes the…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 77.5%: A tumultuous sheet of grey washes over the sky, undulating, rolling and impenetrable. The sky begins to…
A tumultuous sheet of grey washes over the sky, undulating, rolling and impenetrable.
The sky begins to darken and a small village is engulfed in shadow and not too far away, up upon a small unremarkable hill, a boy no older than the age of 15 carries his washing back inside before the rain gets to it. People don’t know how he got there or why, all they know about him are the rumors being spread around town. “He lives all by himself,” some say, others talk about how he grows his own food but the general sentiment centres around the idea “He must be so lonely without anyone to talk to.”
The boy knows about their conversations, their whispering drifts up to his small mundane wooden shack, down through the chimney and into his delicate alabaster ears. As the sun begins to fade under the horizon and the fire starts to burn low, their murmurings become clearer. “My brother said he watches us from up there,” “What does he do all day,” “What a weirdo.” The boy had become used to these words, their arrival each night filling him with an unusual sense of familiarity. At first he wondered what they meant and he would open his windows and glance down at their small houses, searching for the people talking about him but he never found them. From the top of the hill, the village seemed so distant and the boy felt so alienated but that was all he ever knew so how could he complain? He convinced himself that they were afraid of him, that he wasn't welcomed. At least, that's what he told himself.
Was the boy on the hill, really a boy on a hill though?
Maybe he was a boy who sat alone at the back of the classroom.
The hill wasn’t really a hill either, it was the distance between him and everyone else. His wooden shack was the seat he ate lunch at, lodged in the corner of the normally deserted library. A place where his existence could become virtually erased, no-one existed in his reality and he didn't in anyone else's. It was easier for him like this, he didn’t have to worry about the obtrusive stares of others, their opinions, their judgement. He didn't have to worry about any of it.
No-one else existed in his private slice of the universe except him and the whispers.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: “The distance between” “Sometimes the…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 70%: A tumultuous sheet of grey washes over the sky, undulating, rolling and impenetrable. The sky begins to darken…
A tumultuous sheet of grey washes over the sky, undulating, rolling and impenetrable.
The sky begins to darken and a small village is engulfed in shadow and not too far away, up upon a small unremarkable hill, a boy no older than the age of 15 carries his washing back inside before the rain gets to it. People don’t know how he got there or why, all they know about him are the rumors being spread around town. “He lives all by himself,” some say, others talk about how he grows his own food but the general sentiment centres around the idea “He must be so lonely without anyone to talk to.”
The boy knows about their conversations, their whispering drifts up to his small mundane wooden shack, down through the chimney and into his delicate alabaster ears. As the sun begins to fade under the horizon and the fire starts to burn low, their murmurings become clearer. “My brother said he watches us from up there,” “What does he do all day,” “What a weirdo.” The boy had become used to these words, their arrival each night filling him with an unusual sense of familiarity. At first he wondered what they meant and he would open his windows and glance down at their small houses, searching for the people talking about him but he never found them. From the top of the hill, the village seemed so distant and the boy felt so alienated but that was all he ever knew so how could he complain? He convinced himself that they were afraid of him, that he wasn't welcomed. At least, that's what he told himself.
The boy on the hill wasn’t really a boy on a hill though.
He was a boy who sat alone at the back of the classroom.
The hill wasn’t really a hill either, it was the distance between him and everyone else. His wooden shack was the seat he ate lunch at, lodged in the corner of the normally deserted library. A place where his existence could become virtually erased, no-one existed in his reality and he didn't in anyone else's. It was easier for him like this, he didn’t have to worry about the obtrusive stares of others, their opinions, their judgement. He didn't have to worry about any of it.
No-one else existed in his private slice of the universe except him and the whispers.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: it was in relation to the category of…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 77.5%: The tiling was cold against his cheek, smelling like a damp rag and stained with the failed ambitions of the…
The tiling was cold against his cheek, smelling like a damp rag and stained with the failed ambitions of the few before him. A heavy boot held his head to the floor but the man didn't struggle. His wrists were cinched behind his back with plastic ties digging into his bony skin, yet he felt a strange, buoyant lightness. A weightlessness he hadn't known for a decade. The feeling of freedom. Inside his closed fist, he felt along the comforting edges of the gold band on his ring finger. He squeezed it like a child on their parents finger, clutching onto those memories for strength.
"Look at me!", a voice barked. He looked up only to be greeted by the never ending hollow black void of a rifle barrel. But he didn't even blink.
BANG.
Three hours earlier the man sat by Desk 203 in the Ministry of Clarity. The room was a vast, windowless grid of beige cubicles. The rhythmic scritch-scratch of markers against documents echoed through the chamber like a ceaseless tune. His job was simple. He was an architect of silence. Ever since that night, the uprising scrubbed from every piece of media in the country, the state had existed in a state of enforced blindness. And he was one of those blinders. His friends at the canteen told him his silence was a shield. A way to keep his head down and his daughter safe. But as he dragged his black marker across the morning's papers, the shield felt more like a shroud covering what spark he once had. He glanced over at the wedding ring on his finger, its golden lustre dimmed by years of ink dust, and felt nothing but the drab, dull weight of the city's secrets dangling over him.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Framework 3: Writing about personal…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: Growing up, I always admired the little robots my mother would create. Sometimes she’d use scraps from an old…
Growing up, I always admired the little robots my mother would create. Sometimes she’d use scraps from an old laptop, or an old toy to create something entirely new. To me, that was the purest form of art.
I wanted to open the gate into her world. That was the direction I wanted to steer my life in.
During my earlier school years, I found myself obsessed with math, the way the world around us worked, and of course, mechas, robots, and anything to do with machines. I still remember showing my mother my creations, and one time that I did…I had seen an expression of pure love and wonder on her face. My creation wasn’t even that good, it was quite rudimentary. My mother however, chose to encourage me.
I must confess, I was honestly never good at the stuff I found myself obsessed with. My mother may have been proud of my creation, but it was a cheap copy of something she had made ages ago. Among the strained scoldings from my mum, the bad grades, and the several, several disfigured robots that I caused, I had to wonder – maybe chasing the direction my mother decided to travel in wasn’t the best idea for me.
I had no idea what to do with myself.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Break The Silence Image of a group of…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: Everyone looks back fondly on their time in Primary School. At recess you would just run around and have fun,…
Everyone looks back fondly on their time in Primary School. At recess you would just run around and have fun, with no care in the world. Then you get to high school, where a change is obvious. You aren't innocent to the world anymore. You begin to learn your morals, what is right and what is wrong. Soon enough, you begin to witness mistreatment, bullying, around the school. The bigger and stronger kids assume power and control over everyone else. Once you witness this, you are given a choice, stand up, and fight for justice, putting yourself at risk in the process. Or do you stay silent, let the corruption and oppression go unopposed. This hypothetical is alive all throughout the world, not just in the school yard, but everywhere. Everyday, people face the difficult choice of letting injustice continue to survive, or breaking the silence, and creating change. So, I pose to the audience, if it is your friend being bullied, which option do you choose?
Let's say you choose to let it happen, keep yourself away from the danger. You choose silence. Because that is exactly what it is. Silence, is a choice. And it is a good choice, clearly. Billions of people around the world are choosing it every day so it must be good. Right? Silence can be a good choice for the individual, but it is never a good choice for the collective. If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppression. Because that is exactly what they want. The school bully doesn't want intrusion, corrupt governments don't want minorities to speak up, let their stories be heard. They know they are in the wrong, and they know that visibility is their weakness. So what do we do? Speak up. Break the silence. Expose the injustices so we can cut them out of our lives. Humans are born with a special talent. Their voice, their words. So why do we not use it?
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: “Where The Map Ends” Stimulus:…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: Nala Tanvi 25 Albert Ave Melbourne, Vic, 3000 25th June, 2026 Senator Pauline Hanson Parliament of Australia…
Nala Tanvi
25 Albert Ave
Melbourne, Vic, 3000
25th June, 2026
Senator Pauline Hanson
Parliament of Australia
Canberra, ACT, 2650
Dear Senator Hanson,
I've travelled as far as where the map ends to live in this great nation. I was eight years old when I first saw this land from above. I was literally sitting in the window seat watching the clouds breaking over the red earth as we began to descend. When my family came here, we came seeking better opportunities, a better future a better home. You however, have spent the last 3 decades, certainly telling me and other immigrants like myself that this country is not ours to land in or to call home.
In 1996, you stood at Parliament warning that Australia was going to be "swamped by Asians." In 2016, you regurgitated the same words but with a different target. Muslims. Twenty-years apart and you continue to say the same thing, but with a new threat, demographic that you say are "invading" this country. It does not matter what ends of the earth a person comes from, if they come to this country seeking refuge, or seeking a better life, they have no right of calling this place home.
Underneath the word "swamped" is what you truly believe.
You believe that a nation that is built on more than one culture cannot be strong and united. You blame difference for this country's disunity. Pointing at countries like Ireland, Bosnia and parts of Africa to explain your prejudice. But, these countries are not case studies of multiculturalism failing. They're borders that have been built by people that never have to experience the consequences their construction. They're nations that are exploited by their own oppressors, and then are "gifted" independance, just be governed by leaders just as evil as their oppressors. These are not examples of nations built on multiculturalism. These are false equivalences that you use to push your xenophobic, and bigotted agenda.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Personal Journey
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 92.5%: Everyone notices the empty chair beside me but no one has ever asked who it belongs to. It has a name. Not…
Everyone notices the empty chair beside me but no one has ever asked who it belongs to.
It
has
a
name.
Not someone living. Not someone dead. The spare chair belongs to Maron, and she takes up exactly the right amount of space.
The classroom empties the same way every Friday. Chairs scrape against the floor, bags zip shut, and the door creaks closed. One by one, the noise disappears into the corridor until there is nothing left but the hum of the lights. I am always the one who stays behind, watching their backs disappear through the doorway.
I sight of them through the window as they cross the oval, four of them, already laughing at something I can't hear.
My fingers settle against the pencil case, tracing its familiar edge.
"They simply forgot," Maron says, knowing what I need to hear. "That is all it was."
Their footsteps fade beyond me, carrying them along a path I never stepped onto.
Outside, the tall one is doing an impression. They fold into laughter together once more, shoulders touching, pulled toward each other.
Whatever is pulling them stops short of me.
I know them all separately. The loudest, the latest, the one who smooths things over before they break.
These things stick with you, even when you wish they wouldn’t, small details that somehow find a way to stay.
“They always laugh like that,” Maron says. “It’s not even that funny.” I leave her words where they are. They are easier to hold than the silence outside.
Through the window, the tall one starts another impression. I lean closer, catching only fragments of her voice until the punchline reaches me. I understand it a second after they do, just as their laughter rises together.
Without warning, something escapes, a laugh, abrupt and unwelcome. My hand flies to my mouth but it's already out, spilling into a silence that wasn't built to hold it.
Another follows before I can swallow the first. Two laughs now, loose in a room with no one to catch them, no one to laugh back. I watch them outside, one covering her mouth, eyes crinkling as the other bends forward beside her.
Maron taps her pencil against my desk, waiting until I look at her instead.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Framework country
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: The stadium was full of countries. They were draped over shoulders, tied around wrists and held above the crowd…
The stadium was full of countries. They were draped over shoulders, tied around wrists and held above the crowd as people shouted for the places they had come from. An Italian flag moved through the seats like a wave, followed by the green and white of Pakistan. Somewhere behind me, a Brazilian jersey flashed between Australians wearing their own colours. I watched how easily people carried their countries with them, and then I looked for mine.
Lebanon.
My eyes moved across the crowd, searching between flags and jerseys, waiting for the red and white to appear. Everyone around me seemed to have something they could point to and say, There. That is where I am from. I had nothing to point to.
My feet were planted on Australian soil. Yet sometimes I wondered what it meant to call this soil mine when it had held stories long before mine ever arrived. This land had belonged to First Peoples who had known and cared for Country for generations before Australia was the country I recognised today. Beneath the stadium was a history older than my own.
And still, Lebanon had always existed somewhere else.
It lived in the stories my family carried from a land I knew mostly through their memories. It lived in the way my relatives spoke, in names passed from one generation to the next, in photographs where mountains rose behind houses and the sea stretched beyond them. Lebanon was not just the name of a country on a map. It was land that had held the people who came before me.
Then a name appeared on the screen. I almost missed it, but when I read it again, I knew it immediately: a Lebanese name. The player ran onto the field beneath Australian colours. To everyone around me, he was another Australian athlete.
But I knew the name.
Something rose in my chest before I could stop it. There you are.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Framework country
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 92.5%: The stadium was full of countries. They were draped over shoulders, tied around wrists and held above the…
The stadium was full of countries. They were draped over shoulders, tied around wrists and held above the crowd as people shouted for the places they had come from. An Italian flag moved through the seats like a wave, followed by the green and white of Pakistan. Somewhere behind me, a Brazilian jersey flashed between rows of Australians wearing their own colours. For a few hours, the stadium seemed to make the whole world fit inside it. I watched how easily people carried their countries with them, and then I looked for mine.
Lebanon.
My eyes moved across the crowd again, searching between flags and jerseys, waiting for the red and white to appear. I knew it was only a piece of fabric, yet its absence felt larger than that. Everyone around me seemed to have something they could point to and say, There. That is where I am from. I had nothing to point to.
My feet were planted on Australian soil. I had grown up here. This was the ground I walked to school on, the streets I knew without thinking, the stadiums where I had watched sport since I was young. Australia was not somewhere I had simply visited. It was the place beneath my feet. Yet sometimes I wondered what it meant to call this soil mine when it had held stories long before mine ever arrived. This land had belonged to First Peoples who had known and cared for Country for generations before Australia was the country I recognised today. Beneath the noise of the stadium, beneath the concrete and the seats and the field, there was a history older than my own.
And still, Lebanon had always existed somewhere else.
It lived in the stories my family carried from a land I knew mostly through their memories. It lived in the way my relatives spoke, in the names passed from one generation to the next, in the photographs where mountains rose behind houses and the sea stretched beyond them. Lebanon was not just the name of a country on a map. It was land that had held the people who came before me.
Sometimes I wondered whether that was what made Country so difficult. How could I belong to a place whose earth I stood on when another place had shaped the people who shaped me? I had left one piece of land behind, yet I was still carrying what it had given me.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Framework country
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 92.5%: The stadium was full of countries. They were draped over shoulders, tied around wrists and held above the…
The stadium was full of countries. They were draped over shoulders, tied around wrists and held above the crowd as people shouted for the places they had come from. An Indian flag moved through the seats like a wave, followed by the green and white of Pakistan. Somewhere behind me, a Brazilian jersey flashed between rows of Australians wearing their own colours. For a few hours, the stadium seemed to make the whole world fit inside it. I watched how easily people carried their countries with them, and then I looked for mine.
Lebanon.
My eyes moved across the crowd again, searching between flags and jerseys, waiting for the red and white to appear. I knew it was only a piece of fabric, yet its absence felt larger than that. Everyone around me seemed to have something they could point to and say, There. That is where I am from. I had nothing to point to.
My feet were planted on Australian soil. I had grown up here. This was the ground I walked to school on, the streets I knew without thinking, the stadiums where I had watched sport since I was young. Australia was not somewhere I had simply visited. It was the place beneath my feet. Yet sometimes I wondered what it meant to call this soil mine when it had held stories long before mine ever arrived. This land had belonged to First Peoples who had known and cared for Country for generations before Australia was the country I recognised today. Beneath the noise of the stadium, beneath the concrete and the seats and the field, there was a history older than my own.
And still, Lebanon had always existed somewhere else.
It lived in the stories my family carried from a land I knew mostly through their memories. It lived in the way my relatives spoke, in the names passed from one generation to the next, in the photographs where mountains rose behind houses and the sea stretched beyond them. Lebanon was not just the name of a country on a map. It was land that had held the people who came before me.
Sometimes I wondered whether that was what made Country so difficult. How could I belong to a place whose earth I stood on when another place had shaped the people who shaped me? I had left one piece of land behind, yet I was still carrying what it had given me.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Framework country
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 82.5%: The stadium was full of countries. They were draped over shoulders, tied around wrists and held above the…
The stadium was full of countries.
They were draped over shoulders, tied around wrists and held above the crowd as people shouted for the places they had come from. An Indian flag moved through the seats like a wave, followed by the green and white of Pakistan. Somewhere behind me, a Brazilian jersey flashed between rows of Australians wearing their own colours. For a few hours, the stadium seemed to make the whole world fit inside it.
I watched them all.
I watched how easily people carried their countries with them.
Then I looked for mine.
Lebanon.
My eyes moved across the crowd again, searching between flags and jerseys, waiting for the red and white to appear. I knew it was only a piece of fabric, yet its absence felt larger than that. Everyone around me seemed to have something they could point to and say, There. That is where I am from.
I had nothing to point to.
My feet were planted on Australian soil.
I had grown up here. This was the ground I walked to school on, the streets I knew without thinking, the stadiums where I had watched sport since I was young. Australia was not somewhere I had simply visited. It was the place beneath my feet.
But Lebanon had always existed somewhere else.
It lived in the stories my family carried from a land I knew mostly through their memories. It lived in the way my relatives spoke, in the names passed from one generation to the next, in the photographs where mountains rose behind houses and the sea stretched beyond them. Lebanon was not just the name of a country on a map. It was land that had held the people who came before me.
Sometimes I wondered whether that was what made Country so difficult.
How could I belong to a place whose earth I stood on when another place had shaped the people who shaped me?
The question stayed with me as the match continued.
Then a name appeared on the screen.
I almost missed it.
I read it once, then again.
A Lebanese name.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Let’s do it Prompt: Play is…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: Dear Father Time 31/12/25 I’m not ready. I don’t understand how anyone around could be ready, but I know that I…
Dear Father Time 31/12/25
I’m not ready. I don’t understand how anyone around could be ready, but I know that I am not ready. How am I supposed to be ready to graduate when I swear it was only a couple years ago that I was playing in a sand box not wanting recess to end? You’ve made a game out of my time, so I’ll appreciate it if you just pause it for now. Won’t be long, just long enough so I can some time to catch up to my peers. Please, Father time I need you to do me this one favour since you’ve been messing me up all these past years, I believe I deserve it this one time. I am not ready to graduate, I am not ready for this part of my life to end, please I am not ready for this limited time I have left to continue to tick by.
This game that you made all these years ago, this game that I wasn’t aware that I was even playing. If you pause this time for me, I promise when I do graduate, I’ll continue playing with you straight away. I promise I won’t waste the extra time you provide me, I won’t hesitate like Harry, I won’t daydream like Dan, and I won’t just wait like Wayne. I’ll just every second you provide me like it’s my last. I’m not asking for the buses to stop coming, I’m not asking for time to never continue again, I just want to be able to catch the right bus, so I’m not left behind at my stop. You’re more powerful than, you’re more understanding than me, you’re more than I ever could so please be on my side for once and help me out. I won’t ask again, I promise.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: The framework is about play
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 92.5%: Sirens blast overhead. I feel our small shack tremble around us. Sounds of whispered prayers suffocate the…
Sirens blast overhead. I feel our small shack tremble around us. Sounds of whispered prayers suffocate the room. No one says it, but we all know. Sweat gathers at my hairline and drips down my jaw. The tin fan cooling my face brings as much relief as I can hope for.
Fadi got out last night, but there wasn’t enough room for us. I hated him anyway. I didn’t want to go with him — or at least, that’s what I tell myself.
Silence is rare these days. I sometimes wonder if I remember what it sounds like. Crying pierces the air, but no one else moves. I sit up to see what has happened. Omar is slumped over, covering his eyes.
“What’s happened?”
“Abdul kicked the ball at me,” he whimpers.
“Abdul, apologise to your brother.”
They aren’t really brothers, of course. Neighbours. But in these walls, we have become one family.
I turn back inside. There were bigger things to worry about.
Another distant boom shakes the corrugated iron.
“Thunder,” I hear one of the adults whisper.
The children don't seem to notice.
The radio crackles to life.
“Stay indoors. Further attacks are expected. Remain with your families and stay away from windows. If you are able, help those around you. God save us all.”
Now the adults have begun to weep. There is no point in crying now. If they are going to act like children, they should go outside and play football rather than sit here with those of us trying to keep ourselves together. I look around. Everyone else is shaking uncontrollably, eyes bloodshot. I wipe my forehead and turn back.
“What are we going to do?” someone asks.
“Look at us. Where are we supposed to run? There’s nowhere left to go.”
I want to find a snappy retort, but theyre right. What can be done?
The leather ball comes rolling back into our hut. I nudge it back out with the toe of my shoe.
“They deserve to know,” a voice interrupts from the corner.
“You don’t have the right to steal their joy,” I hiss. “What good would it do? They’re children. Do you want them to spend whatever time they have left terrified?”
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: We can choose our departure point but…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 75%: They’d trusted Virginia to get the flowers, but that was all. She’d searched up ‘condolences flowers’. He was…
They’d trusted Virginia to get the flowers, but that was all. She’d searched up ‘condolences flowers’. He was only a hamster, after all – he was never going to last for long. Truthfully, she hadn’t been to a funeral since before she could read – and she’d been up last night, hunched over the chessboard. There was a tournament next week, and she was good, but no good enough (she always got stuck in endgames) so back and forth the pieces went – every spare bit of time, back and forth.
She overheard her sister, Lena, practicing a speech for Rooks funeral that morning. She’d felt bitter about this. Lena had this piercing sensibility that made Virginia feel so ashamed – ashamed about anything at all: mistakes and cruelties, rudeness, benign things like bad breath and procrastination, or forgetting to buy flowers.
Since Rooks death, her father had mandated weekly sessions with the school counsellor (meaning she often missed chess club). He – neurotic, short and prone to overreaction – would make a fuss if she didn’t go. Her conversations with the shrink were boring and inane. But she always went, and turning the corner, here she was pain. She didn’t feel like thinking today. Especially not for the goddamn hamster.
“So, the funerals today.” He probed. “Are you feeling regulated?” What a hack.
“I’m fine. Its not a real funeral, we’re just going to put some flowers by his favourite spot. No burial.” The walls were pale like intestines. Or like the pimples on the councillor’s face.
“I see. Does It remind you of your mother at all? Your father spoke to me about her over email.”
“What? No, why?”
“Do you remember much about her?” A long pause. “Your mother?”
“Yes, obviously, my mother.” Virginia replied tensely. His only response was his placid expression. And wasn’t that just abject condescension – yes, that, and his way of speaking. She was sure he had something dark to hide behind his impassive jargon. “It was all such a long time ago. I remember the funeral, I guess.”
“What do you remember?”
(Tragic Theatre; an animal wailing.)
Virginia was distracted, her mind on gambits and openings. “Uh, it was raining. Everybody was in black. That’s generic. I don’t know. Like, honestly, I’m probably just remembering some funeral from TV right now. Like a pop culture funeral. I was four so.”
“Try harder. Do you remember anything at all?”
“Fucking—” she exhaled sharply. “Flowers. Red flowers. I remember them being wrong.” Too intrusive. Romantic where they shouldn’t be. Ominous, bloody. They were telenovela flowers – so melo dramatic.
“That’s good.” She was going to slit his cartoonishly long neck. She wanted to run – not to home, but to that flicking memory. (What a strange thought. Run to a memory? (She was tired, she decided.)). He looked up from his notepad. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. That’s Lao Tzu, you know.” Prick.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: personal journies
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 75%: The funny thing about distance is that it just sort of happens. No one tells you it's happening, no one says…
The funny thing about distance is that it just sort of happens. No one tells you it's happening, no one says “this is where we stop being close now”, there's no big moment where it all changes.
But it will change.
My brother and I used to be inseparable, we would share everything from desserts at dinner and drawing on a Sunday morning, to arguments for who got the front seat of the car and screaming at each other to “stop breathing my air!”. Our childhood was filled with noise, colour, inside jokes and friendship, and lots of lego.
Building things together was how we used to spend our time. We would open up the big lego bags and watch the floorboards disappear as we poured the bricks all over the ground. Hours would pass as we would find a 4 stud, the special diamonds to put in our bases, the white door that would always end up being confiscated because we would fight over it. We would build houses that didn't make sense, cities with robots to come destroy them, cars that couldn't move, and weapons for our characters. We never followed the instructions when we were building, the same way we had no instructions to follow about growing up.
But once we stopped going to school together, when I went to high school and he stayed at our old primary school, things began to stop. Not suddenly or bluntly, but in a way you never really noticed until you realised the lego bag you once opened everyday, was gathering dust in the cupboard.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: VCAA 2025 EXAM
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 70%: Life is a game. 48 hours without optimising yourself A review of WATTLE Point, two hours away from Melbourne.…
Life is a game.
48 hours without optimising yourself
A review of WATTLE Point, two hours away from Melbourne.
Productivity: 0/5
Value for money: 5/5 (85 a night for cabins)
Colour: 5/5
Wifi: None. (See productivity)
Best Time to go:
On the weekend you are most certain you cannot spare. You know the exact weekend I am talking about. The weekend filled with gym classes, brunch booking, side hustles, ‘Life admin,’ and a podcast about becoming a better person. Cancel all of it! Go and see Wattle point. If you have entered a point in your life where the ball and chain of the ridged 9-5 has drained colour from you life. Your work week is mundane, bland, typical and draining. This is when you must go to wattle point. If you've lost yourself within the work schedule, you must remind yourself of who you truely are as you can only find yourself through play.
What to Pack:
A jumper, a towel, $50 in cash and one paperback book that you can abandon on page forty. Leave your laptop, your step counter and the phrase “make the most of it” at home. Wattle point is not the place where you catch up on emails, admin or sort out your life, this trip is to foster your true self from playing again, doing what you truely want.
My review:
Only consider reading this review if you are someone who has scheduled ‘relaxing’ between your gym session and meal prep. Your have graduated a few years ago, and now you have your own lanyard, cubicle and calendar filled with nothing but colourless and lack of play never ending to-do lists. We were all fooled by the work week with the promise of having our two full day weekends, that would satisfy our naturalistic instinct to play. Our weekends have quickly and quietly turned into our second job. The 6am run club. The meal prep. The ‘self-care’ squeezed between two other commitments. Somewhere we forgot that true meaning of play, the game of life has turned into a ridged controlled schedule rather than a gamble within playing and taking risks to be out truest selfs. Rest and finding our own play has been turned into something that is captured, preformed, photographed and improved. So, I went to wattle point to find my truest self through playing again, playing the authentic game of life through having no schedule.
I wasn’t good at playing at first. Not at all. I arrived on Friday night with a mental Itinerary, as list of ‘hidden gems’ saved on my phone, and a low hum of guilt that I was not being productive enough at being unproductive. The anxiety crippled into me as I worried weather or not I was doing enough with my spare time. The cabin was small and slightly crooked, and out the front stood a lopsided old pear tree, entirely uninterested within my career or my life trajectory. I stood their admiring the pear tree, reminiscing on my childhood where i would climb my pear tree at my Childhood home. I remember looking at the pear tree as a little girl, with my eyes admiring its beauty wondering how high I could climb, but now I just stood their waiting for the tree to reveal its fundamental purpose, waiting for its use to become clear to me. It never did. It stood their in the dusk, offering me everything by asking nothing of me.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: personal journeys
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: THE HALLWAY LIGHT I've always been alone. At least, that's what I told my friends when Mum started working late…
THE HALLWAY LIGHT
I've always been alone.
At least, that's what I told my friends when Mum started working late shifts at the hospital. She wouldn't be home until nearly midnight, which meant I had the house to myself every evening.
At first, I loved it.
I could play games without being told to finish my homework. I could eat dinner in front of the television and go to bed whenever I wanted. When Mum left for work, she'd switch on the hallway light and remind me to lock the door.
I'd wait until her car disappeared, then turn the light off.
Every night at nine, she'd call.
“Have you eaten?”
“Yes, Mum.”
“What did you have?”
“Food.”
She'd laugh, then ask about school and remind me to put the bins out. I usually answered while playing games, waiting for her to say goodnight so I could take my headphones off mute.
A few weeks later, I came home from basketball and called out, “Mum, I'm home.”
No answer.
Her slippers were beside the sofa. Her half-finished cup of tea was still on the kitchen bench. I stood there for a moment before remembering she was at work.
I made noodles and ate them at the kitchen table. The house was so quiet I could hear the refrigerator humming.
At nine, my phone rang.
“Have you eaten?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you have?”
“Noodles.”
“You should have some vegetables tomorrow.”
Usually, I'd have rolled my eyes. Instead, I asked what she'd eaten.
There was a pause.
“Something from the staff kitchen.”
“What something?”
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Framework - Protest Title: Move…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 77.5%: Move Forward Good evening everyone, I hope you’re all well. I wanted to host this on a weeknight as I know…
Move Forward
Good evening everyone, I hope you’re all well. I wanted to host this on a weeknight as I know most of you will be playing at concert halls, clubs, bars, rooftops, warehouses and other obscure locations over the weekend. All of this could be lost however, or to better put it, replaced, by AI.
If any of you have been listening to any ambient playlists or 70s rock compilations online in the past year, you may have come across The Velvet Sundown. This soft rock band has no real presence. No live gigs performed. No studio recordings. Just a photo of their ‘band members’ and a soulless streaming page that replicates the raw and authentic sounds of real artists, creating hollow echoes in the music industry. This band went on to rack up millions of streams, even appearing on UK Spotify charts. Many of their listeners thought they were discovering a new band inspired by 1970s soft rock. It wasn’t just inspired, but purely modelled and stolen. These generative AI work and learn from existing human discographies, creating huge copyright and plagiarism problems for artists worldwide. This disgusting loophole leaves performers like you and me potentially uncompensated for having our work illegally borrowed. There could be an indie pop record out there modelled from your guitar melody, or an old-school house track trying to copy your unique analog synth sound.