Premier's Spirit of Anzac Prize

Each year the Spirit of Anzac Award scheme offers students across Victoria in Years 9, 10 and 11 the opportunity to explore Australia's proud war and peacekeeping history. This year we are incredibly pleased to announce that two of our Hotham students have successfully submitted entries and been awarded a $2500 scholarship to support their education. 

More information about the prize - including acknowledgement of statewide winners can be found here.

Jem Firman (Year 11) wrote a moving poem which we have included for your reading pleasure. 

Where heaven meets the deep 

A solemn beauty glows upon deserted shore 

The sky wet and cloaked with cloud 

The ocean blank 

portraying endless grey 

The rolling waves against the rock 

Beat harsh as life 

Waves crash like 

Drums of sacrifice  

Beat rhythmic and random  

as lives lost 

Spheroid gale of sand 

Stings face and memories raw  

Coral bones of battles lost 

Forever mourn these shores 

Remembering the ultimate cost 

Forever frozen freedom of soldiers  

Stolen loved lives 

As she waits upon the shore, 

For a lover ne’er returned 

The lion fierce waves roar on 

Barrel breaks at every cry 

Take shape of husband lost 

The real war over the forever war  

Still churning between remembering forgetting 

Waves roar as heavens open 

Like the oceans cavalry  

Voice of reassuring letters 

Beat harsh as life. 

 She vows in awe return her loving letters 

to this very spot 

Where heaven meets the deep. 

Years pass by a life lived full of pain 

and joy and sorrow to her promise true 

Pages flutter 

Letters lost to ocean stirring 

Free from all bondage of words. 

At last. 

Only now that her 

Ashes scatter dusky grey 

Where heavens meet the deep. 

Sophie Edis (Year 9) Painted an oil portrait of Ted Young as young, enlisted soldier. Ted joins us every year at our ANZAC assemblies and relays his experiences from his time in the 10th Australian (AIF) Field Ambulance Association.  We are very grateful to Ted and his family for sharing images from the family archive.         

Kelly Stals Head of House - Hotham