VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Imagine yourself trapped in a room…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 75%: The putrid smell of mould and rotting wood numb me. Cold creeps in through the corners of my room. The warm…
The putrid smell of mould and rotting wood numb me. Cold creeps in through the corners of my room. The warm glow of the fireplace slowly retreats as the wet air brings a blue glow. My thumbs twiddle as I feel my bones slowly decaying, skin wrinkling and my hair falling out. The sound of footsteps echo through the hallway; throughout the day they come and go.
As the sun begins to set a steaming bowl of potato soup and stale bread slide under my locked door. I stumble to the food and wolf it down. It’s always enough to stop the hunger from taking me, but never enough to stop me from needing another hole in my belt.
Darkness does not come, rather the mustard tinge of the wallpaper begins to fade as the cold begins to advance and the orange glow that once held retreats into the night. Cold flows through the room as I shake and shiver. Hours pass and my mind wanders and strays away from the beaten path before I find it again. Then as swift as the night came the sun begins to rise on the new day, as holes in the red tattered curtains reveal beams of sunlight fighting away the night.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Oppression persuasive 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 persuasive editorial
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: 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 persuasive editorial
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: 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 persuasive editorial
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 75%: 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 fret 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 · Text Response
Text Response: Language/identify BAC ( flexible essay )
VCE Text Response essay scoring 87.5%: Trevor Noah stands in a dark jail cell, reaching not for a weapon, but for a Tsonga dialect to bridge the "race…
Trevor Noah stands in a dark jail cell, reaching not for a weapon, but for a Tsonga dialect to bridge the "race gap" that Apartheid had spent decades engineering. In his visceral memoir Born a Crime, Noah explores the notion that in a society designed to divide, language functions as the ultimate tool for empathy and navigation. He contends that [Insert Prompt Keyword] was not merely a social skill, but a transgressive tool that allowed him to cross arbitrary boundaries. While identity was a fluid performance required for survival, it was ultimately the mastery of language that allowed Noah to assert his humanity.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: The road to protest
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: The Road to Protest On January 27 2026, the Earth was declared the closest it has ever been to global…
The Road to Protest
On January 27 2026, the Earth was declared the closest it has ever been to global catastrophe, recording only 85 seconds until midnight.
Today, our society is filled with hatred, violence and a profound ignorance to progression. We are living through a constant war and only now has the timeline for our survival been reduced. The “Doomsday clock”, the metaphorical time piece that reflects on our increasing usage of nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and an inaction toward climate change, has re-established that we are nearing the elimination of humanity.
Our existence is placed on a forked road.
We have just two choices.
Action, or acceptance.
We either protest to change, or we resign ourselves to the inevitable.
Issues in society begin with complacency. They begin through the silence that stems from our unprecedented comfort and psychological resistance to change. Often, we hear about an issue such as climate change and we make the active decision to remain quiet and do what is seemingly easier… blend in with the crowd. As a collective, we are reflecting what is a static, risk averse population driven not by an ideal for change, but rather a preference for stability and a false sense of security motivated by past prosperities.
This collective silence is often misinterpreted as our consent. When we retreat to this false sense of security, we display approval to systemic actions, ultimately dismantling the healthy democracy. Over time, through an escalation of global catastrophe, we begin to see a slip into soft authoritarianism, catalysing our jouney to ‘doom’.
The real question is, when?
When do we stop submitting ourselves and our future to systemic oppression?
When do we fight for the government to reconsider their priorities and establish reform on each law permitting our trek to doom?
Our silence is violence.
Our complacency is complicity.
We are the guilty ones.
The dropping seconds are our fault, and so it is our job to make the right decision.
To begin the road to protest.
The time is ticking.
85, 84, 83…
Successful protest begins through breaking the illusion of security. It begins through forcing a sense of accountability and the recognition of our duty as an individual and as a collective.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Playing at Life Stimulus 1:…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 77.5%: Playing at Life Sleep. Eat. School. Study. Repeat. The endless loop of teenage reality. As every revolution…
Playing at Life
Sleep. Eat. School. Study. Repeat. The endless loop of teenage reality. As every revolution passes, we dig ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole which is becoming increasingly difficult to escape from. Despite your notable experiences, the majority of you here today would unfortunately not be truly aware of how the education system has evolved in more recent years.
Since 1991, the VCE external examinations have been forced upon every student in the state. The concept of play, encouraged and explored so well in our junior years, is abandoned for the idealisation of success through academic achievement. As students, we are told so often that our road to our goals and dreams comes through hard work, perseverance, and an unhealthy, obsessive focus on the education we are provided. This could not be further from the truth.
The education system laid out before us today is broken. It chooses to ignore the fundamental principle which best strengthens our development. The one which for so long in our lives made or broke our view on people, places and things.
Play. Dreaming. Imagining. Creating. Expressing.
Play is the avenue through which children and teenagers all over the world are given the tools they need to solve problems, express themselves and create new things.
This is what life is about. Our ability to write under the pressure of a clock doesn’t define us. Instead, it is our ability to problem solve and create new things which measures our success.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Playing at Life Stimulus 1:…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 77.5%: Playing at Life Sleep. Eat. School. Study. Repeat. The endless loop of teenage reality. As every revolution…
Playing at Life
Sleep. Eat. School. Study. Repeat. The endless loop of teenage reality. As every revolution passes, we dig ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole which is becoming increasingly difficult to escape from. Despite your notable experiences, the majority of you here today would unfortunately not be truly aware of how the education system has evolved in more recent years.
Since 1991, the VCE external examinations have been forced upon every student in the state. The concept of play, encouraged and explored so well in our junior years, is abandoned for the idealisation of success through academic achievement. As students, we are told so often that our road to our goals and dreams comes through hard work, perseverance, and an unhealthy, obsessive focus on the education we are provided. This could not be further from the truth.
The education system laid out before us today is broken. It chooses to ignore the fundamental principle which best strengthens our development. The one which for so long in our lives made or broke our view on people, places and things.
Play. Dreaming. Imagining. Creating. Expressing.
Play is the avenue through which children and teenagers all over the world are given the tools they need to solve problems, express themselves and create new things.
This is what life is about. Our ability to write under the pressure of a clock doesn’t define us. Instead, it is our ability to problem solve and create new things which measures our success.
VCE · Text Response
Text Response: Analyze the ways a studied text has…
VCE Text Response essay scoring 80%: Within the context of 20th century America, understandings of race, identity and religion were profoundly shaped by…
Within the context of 20th century America, understandings of race, identity and religion were profoundly shaped by rigid societal expectations, the Civil Rights Movement, and the lasting impacts of the Jim Crow laws. In his 1995 memoir ‘The Color of Water’, James McBride reflects on the enduring effects of this racially divided society, exploring how segregation, discrimination and social expectations influenced both his upbringing as a mixed-race child and his mother’s experiences as a Jewish immigrant woman. Through the memoir’s dual narrative structure, retrospective narration and figurative language, McBride engages with the issues of racial and religious discrimination, finding personal identity and the effects of intergenerational trauma which are significant within the text’s 20th century American context
Within the context of 20th century America, where racial segregation and prejudice shaped everyday life, McBride engages with the significant issue of identity through Ruth’s emotional silence and James’s resulting confusion surrounding his own sense of self. In a society where Ruth’s identity as a white woman raising Black children would have exposed her family to discrimination and social judgement, her refusal to discuss her past becomes both a survival mechanism and a source of emotional distance. This is reflected when James observes that “Mommy’s tears seemed to come from somewhere else, a place far away, a place inside her that she never let any of us children visit, and even as a boy I felt there was pain behind them.” The metaphor of a “place” suggests a deliberately closed-off part of Ruth’s identity, highlighting how her past is inaccessible, even to her own children. Through James’s childhood perspective, McBride highlights the emotional consequences of silence, as James instinctively senses “there was pain behind them” despite lacking the knowledge to fully understand it. This unresolved uncertainty contributes directly to James’s identity struggle, as he reflects, “I felt like a tinkertoy kid building my own self out of one of those toy building sets.” The metaphor of McBride “building” himself illustrates how Ruth’s memories and words become the building blocks for his self-understanding, and as he reconstructs her past, he simultaneously rebuilds his own life and heritage. While the symbol of a ‘building set’ reinforces the idea that James must assemble a sense of self without stable guidance or clear cultural grounding. By linking James’s fractured sense of self to Ruth’s silence, McBride engages with the broader issue of how racial division and historical trauma impact family relationships and identity formation. Through this portrayal, McBride reflects the cultural context of post-segregation America, revealing how the pressures created by racism and social exclusion continue to shape individuals across generations.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Statement of Intention on my piece…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 70%: My creative piece takes the form of a personal opinion piece hybrid text inspired by the mentor text ‘Conquest…
My creative piece takes the form of a personal opinion piece hybrid text inspired by the mentor text ‘Conquest of Land and Dream’ by Yumna Kassab aimed towards British people residing in Australia, specifically people that have resentment towards their heritage. Her piece inspired me through her use of both personal reflections and factual details. I incorporated this form throughout my piece jumping back and forth through my current reflection and the past. I decided to create both a personal reflection and opinion piece hybrid as it allowed me to combine and explore both the contextual history of my colonial roots and the creative ideas trapped inside my mind. Both my piece and Yumna’s explore the eradication of the Indigenous culture, to make room for the idolised European culture. I drew upon the stimulus material of the image showing human silhouettes climbing a mountain, ensuring everyone is supported through this climb to unity. My piece differs to Yumna’s piece as she explores the damages done while I look deeper and talk about how the damage is done, yet we can still work together to become united as one. The purpose of my piece is to both reflect on the damage my ancestors did to the Indigenous culture and also encourage a change towards one nation, united together. The Conquest of Land and Dream provoked a feeling of
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Statement of Intention on my piece…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 70%: Statement of Intention
Statement of Intention
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 The cost of living is like a…
Check yourself before you wreck yourself You've got one minute to explain yourself
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. 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: Rising together
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: THE BRUNSWICK TIMES Rising together Last Thursday, I walked past the US consulate on St Kilda Road. It is one…
THE BRUNSWICK TIMES
Rising together
Last Thursday, I walked past the US consulate on St Kilda Road. It is one of those squat buildings that exist in your life not as a place, but as a coordinate, a landmark you use to judge whether you have missed the number 6 tram. On Thursday, there was a woman standing outside it, holding an Iranian flag, almost asking me to stand up with her.
She was maybe fifty, wearing a dark coat that was not warm enough for April. The flag moved more than she did, and at her feet lay a piece of creased cardboard - “STOP THE BOMBS.” Public servants walked past her through the consulate’s glass doors, badges swinging, coffees in hand, and I watched them perform that particular kind of not-seeing that people do when they have decided, collectively and without discussion, that something is not there. I read the sign. I agreed with it. I could not join her. I was thinking, at the time, about the oat milk that I had left outside the fridge, and whether the tofu I had bought on Tuesday would survive another day. I mention this not because it is funny, though it is, but because it is the truth, and the truth of it is the whole problem.
Most of us knew the war in fragments only. Nine hundred strikes in twelve hours. A girls’ school hit near Bandar Abbas. The Strait of Hormuz closed. And, of course, petrol prices up, which is the only detail that most Australians had experienced firsthand, a detail that tells you everything about the relationship between distance and concern. Because it is, of course, possible to turn the crank that makes suffering harmless: to fold a war into a headline, to smooth grief into language, to squeeze another person’s terror into a clean little feeling called concern and leave only the faint residue of having noticed. The woman with the flag was not compressing, nor was she silent. She had taken something the rest of us had folded into a headline and unfolded it and carried it to a footpath and held it up in the cold and waited for someone to look at it for longer than it takes to look away.
She was not rising with anyone. She had risen to take a stand for herself.
The oat milk, it turns out, was inside the fridge.
ADVERTISEMENT: oat milk, it’s like milk but made for humans
Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, estimated that 3.5 per cent of a population, mobilised nonviolently, is sufficient to topple any government. The rising woman was not 3.5 percent. She was one person standing outside a building that processes visas, not one that runs a war. Chenoweth’s threshold is assembled one person at a time, in kitchens and on trams, and in the particular silence when you read a headline, feel something, and you do not rise. Someone has to rise first.
VCE · Text Response
Text Response: Travis's morals never change within the…
VCE Text Response essay scoring 87.5%: In Stephen Maxwell Johnson's High Ground, the morality of the characters is explored as heavily nuanced and…
In Stephen Maxwell Johnson's High Ground, the morality of the characters is explored as heavily nuanced and multilayered rather than completely clear or direct. Travis, the former WW1 sniper, is forced to navigate and confront his colonial ideologies and the role he has played in condoning systemic violence. Johnson illustrates this through Travis ' transition from inactive remorse to external resistance. This is highlighted through his initial outward indifference towards Gutjuk, progressing towards his sacrificial defiance at the end of the film. Thus, suggesting his internalised guilt is insufficient for true moral progression. Ultimately, the film suggests that Travis’s beliefs and the expression of his values evolve over the course of the film in rejection of the standard of frontier society, eventually transcending the period of moral stagnation and self-serving redemption.
Johnson first portrays Travis as detached from his violence and complicity, as his weaponised role as colonial authority obscures him from moral accountability. Initially, the film characterises Travis through his role as a sniper in the war. This is evident through the POV shot in the massacre, where he is positioned as isolated and dominant, viewing the Yolngu people through the scope of his rifle. Therefore, this signifies that Travis’s core identity and beliefs centre around his perception of power and control. Johnson employs this visual technique to reflect Travis’s moral narrowness, establishing how he leverages physical distance in order to avoid the reality of the violence he enables. This moral detachment is further reinforced by the reoccurring motif of the ‘high ground’, which Johnson utilises as both a physical enhancement of power and control, and a metaphor that symbolises the colonial power that subdues and oppresses the First Nations people without physical reprehension, due to the distance it creates. By presenting Travis as a product of historical violence and colonial society, Johnson suggests that his morality is initially static and conditioned by the civilisational expectations and brutal experiences of frontier life.
VCE · Text Response
Text Response: In Oedpius the King, there are no right…
VCE Text Response essay scoring 85%: In Oedipus the King, there are no right choices. Do you agree? Presented as a poignant inquiry into the drastic…
In Oedipus the King, there are no right choices.
Do you agree?
Presented as a poignant inquiry into the drastic implications of hubris and divine inevitability, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King is a tragic dissection of the adversity personal flaws can cause. The play exposes the perils of human pride, as Sophocles illustrates how overconfidence blinds mortals to truth and precipitates catastrophe. The playwright challenges the idea that humans are capable of making “right” choices, instead he presents that free will is shrouded by fate and divine authority. Sophocles presents the idea that humans may think they know right from wrong due to their hubris blinding them from the truth; he believes that it is not up to humans to make their own decisions, rather, it is a matter which should be left to the gods. Ultimately the playwright presents the idea that knowledge and enlightenment will only come when humans recognise that rather than right or wrong choices in life, only the word of the gods is to be followed through the oracle and the prophecies.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Identity and belonging: a family sits…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: Swipe. Swipe. Swipe. The dining table, once a site of cluttered plates and overlapping voices, has become a…
Swipe. Swipe. Swipe.
The dining table, once a site of cluttered plates and overlapping voices, has become a cold laboratory of blue light. Across the mahogany, four silhouettes are carved out by the glow of their handheld portals. I watch my father; the flicker of a 15-second reel reflects in his glasses, masking his eyes. Next to him, my sister is a statue, her thumb performing the same rhythmic, mindless dance as mine.
Swipe. Swipe. Swipe.
We are close enough to touch, yet we exist in different hemispheres. If I were to reach out and brush my mother’s hand, I fear she might jump—as if a stranger had touched her in a crowd. That is the irony: I share a surname and a roof with these people, but I no longer know the texture of their thoughts. I know the trending audios they listen to, but I have forgotten the sound of their unscripted laughter.
VCE · Text Response
Text Response: We Have Always Lived In the Castle…
VCE Text Response essay scoring 70%: Jackson illustrates how deviating from the social norms can lead to social ostracism and communal judgement,…
Jackson illustrates how deviating from the social norms can lead to social ostracism and communal judgement, exposing how these actions attempt to force an individual into a cycle of normality. The parochial village in which Merricat and Constance reside believe in conformity, and individuals who choose not to conform are marginalized. The children of the village display their vitriolic behaviour towards Merricat whilst she makes her trip into the village, chanting “Merricat said Connie, would you like a cup of tea. Oh no said Merricat, you’ll poison me,” a cruel rhyme developed by individuals within the village which displays how the poisoning of the Blackwood family is a joke to them. Through the condescending behaviour of the villagers, Jackson critiques how society devalues those who do not fit in with the social norms of the time. She shows that the consequences of resisting expectations is to be treated as incompetent or mentally unstable. Merricat recognises that the “people of the village have always hated
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Craft a short strory in an…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: “The Howling Night” Howls fill the darkened forest around me as I sit perched up from my bed looking down at…
“The Howling Night”
Howls fill the darkened forest around me as I sit perched up from my bed looking down at the trees crowding.
I howls bellow through the forest outside my bedroom window, leaving me perched up upon my bed frozen in time. Cold prickles shoot up my arms as my eyes remain open broadshot from fear.
I gaze outside towards the deep sound ricocheting against my walls.
The silence, for a few minutes atleast, like it was the calm before the storm as the howls begin again, deep, angry, dangerous. They were coming closer and closer towards me, I can’t make nor run such in one as issues watch bet these howls of the night grow in size.
I force the bugs off from under my skin and take in a deep, calming breath while gripping the covers of my bed from under me.
“I have to go find out what it is, maybe it’s just an injured dog.”
I gather my confidence and prepare my things. An old knife that my dad scavenged through drains throughout my room, I was hoping to find some sort of weapon to defend myself throughout the night or even to just make me feel better.
Then I saw it, a light silver sparkle reflecting from the corner of my room. I reach for it and felt it’s an old lantern my reliable knife my dad had gave me when I turned 16. I quickly grab it and place it into my pocket before heading out.
As I’m walking out, as quiet as a mouse, I gently slowly creak open the seal of my window, creating enough of an open space to safely crawl out onto the dewy grass outside my window.
I leap out and safely land onto the ground, but I quickly recognise that it’s way to cold. The night sky encapsulates all of my surroundings as the forest trees around my house grow over my head.
The bugs are back crawling all over and under the raggedy shirt as I shiver. I quickly turn around and climb back into the safe half way back into my room, just enough to grab an old lantern on the sill of my window.
Not really investigating style, it was pink and sparkly in its corners with small little white flowers printed on its every edge. I was given this when I was five to keep a scary monster away as it lit up my room. Though it didn’t have a real candle inside and just a battery, it was good enough for me as I walk deeper into the night.
My lantern held in my right hand and my knife now in my left, I let out a slow steady breath. The heavy feeling in my chest now turns into heavy thumps as energy rushes over me.
I take my first step.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Personal journeys, no specific stimulus.
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 77.5%: The hangers are perfectly spaced out. The music playing is something without a name; soft, directionless. The…
The hangers are perfectly spaced out.
The music playing is something without a name; soft, directionless. The walls are so white they feel like a challenge. They are blank, sterile surfaces which demand the same from me. I move through the racks slowly, my fingers brushing over the fabric of each garment.
At the back of the store, a woman casually examines a blouse in the light. A girl at the counter folds clothes with a terrifying ease. She doesn’t have a weight behind her ribs. She’s just a person in a shop.
Everything is… normal. Very normal.
A puffy sleeve catches my finger. I slowly rub it. I count down the buttons. 1… 2… 3… 4… all perfectly spaced. I try to match my pulse to the rhythm as I count, but my heart is a frantic and irregular thing that refuses to follow along.
Yet, the pressure in my chest sits there. Not quite a pain, something more stubborn, something that sits just beneath my ribs. Something that doesn’t respond to breathing, or to the soft instrumental nothings playing in the background. A vague heaviness that yearns for attention.
As I stop at a rack near a window, the street outside keeps going. A cyclist threads through pedestrians, two women laugh sensibly, a pigeon lands. I stand watching, frozen. The cyclist is gone before I realise I’ve been holding my breath.
I push at the door, it swings behind me, dinging its bell. A sharp gust of wind whacks me, slamming the door and drowning out the nameless music.
A tram rolls down the street, stopping in front of me. I pull myself up into the carriage, the doors slamming shut behind me, my hand latches onto the handrail as it takes off.
Inside, a certain grime that will never fully be cleaned coats each and every surface. The seats are covered in shapes and patterns no one has ever properly examined, faded and etched with dust that will never fully be taken out of them. Remnants of an old spill remain on the floor below my feet.
Glancing around, a teenager in a work uniform laid out between 2 seats catches my eyes, her effortless demeanor inconveniencing the people forced to stand. Someone sighs loudly, probably at me.
Two men engage in a hushed conversation, barely looking at each other, their words dissolve beneath the hum of the tram..
Everything appears as usual.
I shift slightly further into the tram, taking a seat.
The tram dings its bell.
A woman coughs out a wet rattling sound, its raspy tones filling the carriage. I watch as its droplets cover the floor and the chair, then see somebody lean their hand where it just landed.
I get out my phone, and open Google. Did I mean to do that?
symptoms of whooping cough
I skim through the results, weighing up the possibility of them being seriously ill.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: What does Country mean to me.
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 72.5%: A Land Already Living As I take a step into my backyard, I see the gnarled bark of the ageless eucalyptus…
A Land Already Living
As I take a step into my backyard, I see the gnarled bark of the ageless eucalyptus tree standing alone, tall and strong. I run my hands along the trunk of this giant, a soldier that has stood its post watching these lands long before I was born. From my backyard, it is easy to forget that the land beneath the grass and fences once sheltered Aboriginal communities long before Australia was ever claimed or named. The land provided for them, and they provided for the land, with Aboriginal peoples acting as custodians of Country across generations. This landscape was home to a living, interconnected society long before change arrived on the horizon. Looking out from the same space today, I reflect on how that continuity was disrupted when British ships arrived carrying a new vision of settlement and ownership. These were my ancestors, and yet their way of seeing land was shaped by control and expansion rather than the deep relational respect held by Indigenous peoples, where Country was not something to possess, but something to belong to.
Upon landing their boats, the land was instantly declared ‘Terra Nullius’, despite the fact people had called this land and still do call this land home. To Indigenous Australians, it was as if they went home, and their house had been fenced off by foreigners who claimed it was it was theirs. The British quickly imposed their colonial footprint, using their power to try modernise, replicate and clone the United Kingdom, not caring about any of the costs in doing so. This is disgraceful. What gives my people the right to forcefully remove the Indigenous from their own homes? We are equal to the Indigenous, not superior.
It began with physical land barriers that restricted Indigenous access to spiritual sites and movement within their semi-nomadic way of life, something I now understand through the concept of Country as a deep connection between land, identity and survival. This heavily hindered the Aboriginal culture as they weren’t actively able to sustain their spiritual connection to their land. Now their home that was claimed has started to be demolished, leaving none of the history to remain. Even more confronting is the violence inflicted on Indigenous communities during colonisation. Many were subjected to massacres through the British’s superior weaponry. Every single culture has the right to live their lives by their own terms, and we should not prevent people from doing so. We aren’t gods.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: What does Country mean to me. Opinion…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: A Land Already Living As I take a step into my backyard, I see the gnarled bark of the ageless eucalyptus tree…
A Land Already Living
As I take a step into my backyard, I see the gnarled bark of the ageless eucalyptus tree standing alone, tall and strong. I run my hands along the trunk of this giant, a soldier that has stood its post watching these lands long before I was born. To me, country is more than just the physical land we live on but the deeper holistic concept, the concept that was successfully suppressed by my British heritage. My culture resembles a young apple tree, that was planted in place of an enormous old apple tree. Decided by the power hungry British. How dare my own people annihilate a culture already living. A culture almost a part of the land itself.
From my backyard, it is easy to forget that the land beneath the grass and fences once sheltered Aboriginal communities long before Australia was ever claimed or named. The land provided for them, and they provided for the land, with Aboriginal peoples acting as custodians of Country across generations. This landscape was home to a living, interconnected society long before change arrived on the horizon. Looking out from the same space today, I reflect on how that continuity was disrupted when British ships arrived carrying a new vision of settlement and ownership. These were my ancestors, and yet their way of seeing land was shaped by control and expansion rather than the deep relational respect held by Indigenous peoples, where Country was not something to possess, but something to belong to.
Upon landing their boats, the land was instantly declared ‘Terra Nullius’, despite the fact people had called this land and still do call this land home. To Indigenous Australians, it was as if they went home, and their house had been fenced off by foreigners who claimed it was it was theirs. The British quickly imposed their colonial footprint, using their power to try modernise, replicate and clone the United Kingdom, not caring about any of the costs in doing so. This is disgraceful. What gives my people the right to forcefully remove the Indigenous from their own homes? We are equal to the Indigenous, not superior.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: What does Country mean to me. Opinion…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: A Land Already Living As I take a step into my backyard, I see the gnarled bark of the ageless eucalyptus tree…
A Land Already Living
As I take a step into my backyard, I see the gnarled bark of the ageless eucalyptus tree standing alone, tall and strong. I run my hands along the trunk of this giant, a soldier that has stood its post watching these lands long before I was born. To me, country is more than just the physical land we live on but the deeper holistic concept, the concept that was successfully suppressed by my British heritage. My culture resembles a young apple tree, that was planted in place of an enormous old apple tree. Decided by the power hungry British. How dare my own people annihilate a culture already living. A culture almost a part of the land itself.
From my backyard, it is easy to forget that the land beneath the grass and fences once sheltered Aboriginal communities long before Australia was ever claimed or named. The land provided for them, and they provided for the land, with Aboriginal peoples acting as custodians of Country across generations. This landscape was home to a living, interconnected society long before change arrived on the horizon. Looking out from the same space today, I reflect on how that continuity was disrupted when British ships arrived carrying a new vision of settlement and ownership. These were my ancestors, and yet their way of seeing land was shaped by control and expansion rather than the deep relational respect held by Indigenous peoples, where Country was not something to possess, but something to belong to.
Upon landing their boats, the land was instantly declared ‘Terra Nullius’, despite the fact people had called this land and still do call this land home. To Indigenous Australians, it was as if they went home, and their house had been fenced off by foreigners who claimed it was it was theirs. The British quickly imposed their colonial footprint, using their power to try modernise, replicate and clone the United Kingdom, not caring about any of the costs in doing so. This is disgraceful. What gives my people the right to forcefully remove the Indigenous from their own homes? We are equal to the Indigenous, not superior.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: What does Country mean to me. Opinion…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 77.5%: A Land Already Living As I take a step into my backyard, I see the gnarled bark of the ageless eucalyptus…
A Land Already Living
As I take a step into my backyard, I see the gnarled bark of the ageless eucalyptus tree standing alone, tall and strong. I run my hands along the trunk of this giant, a soldier that has stood its post watching these lands long before I was born. To me, country is more than just the physical land we live on but the deeper holistic concept, the concept that was successfully suppressed by my British heritage. My culture resembles a young apple tree, that was planted in place of an enormous old apple tree. Decided by the power hungry British. How dare my own people annihilate a culture already living. A culture almost a part of the land itself.
From my backyard, it is easy to forget that the land beneath the grass and fences once sheltered Aboriginal communities long before Australia was ever claimed or named. The land provided for them, and they provided for the land, with Aboriginal peoples acting as custodians of Country across generations. This landscape was home to a living, interconnected society long before change arrived on the horizon. Looking out from the same space today, I reflect on how that continuity was disrupted when British ships arrived carrying a new vision of settlement and ownership. These were my ancestors, and yet their way of seeing land was shaped by control and expansion rather than the deep relational respect held by Indigenous peoples, where Country was not something to possess, but something to belong to.
Upon landing their boats, the land was instantly declared ‘Terra Nullius’, despite the fact people had called this land and still do call this land home. To Indigenous Australians, it was as if they went home, and their house had been fenced off by foreigners who claimed it was it was theirs. The British quickly imposed their colonial footprint, using their power to try modernise, replicate and clone the United Kingdom, not caring about any of the costs in doing so. This is disgraceful. What gives my people the right to forcefully remove the Indigenous from their own homes? We are equal to the Indigenous, not superior.