English News
Casey Fresh Words Competition Success
It makes me quite ecstatic to watch the creative population of Nossal nurture and hone their skills, establishing the foundation of their success and slowly building their walls and doors, occasionally adorning it with portraits of victorious achievements. Only yesterday I was 15 and in Year 9. The Creative Writing Club had immediately become my safe space. The leaders were confiding and gentle, and the members, ever so supporting. It’s been four years since I joined this club, three in co-leadership. I have seen more members, more contribution, more writing-focused people, more achievements, than ever.
And now is the time to celebrate yet another achievement – five students: Tashi Mallawa, Ebony Noller, An Thu Le Le, Farhan Andalib, and I were awarded as the finalists of the Fresh Words Writing Competition Ceremony. Four of us were present for the ceremony on 21 June at Bunjil Place, alongside Lola Sargasso, a Nossal graduate and well-renowned writer within the Creative Writing Club, who MC’ed the ceremony!
The Fresh Words Writing Competition is an annual contest where anyone in school can enter short stories up to 750 words, and poetry/lyrics up to one page by the end of April. Student finalists get selected by a panel of community judges, and the ceremony happens in June.
It was so wonderful to have a reunion with some of the finest writers in not only our school, but across the City of Casey. Ms Lee-Ack and Dr Schroor also attended the ceremony, and it felt absolutely euphoric to have a community that cherished the writing population, since it often goes unnoticed.
Congratulations to the first-place recipients: Tashi Mallawa of the category Years 7-9 Short Story, for their piece The Hex Zone, Ebony Noller, in the age category of Years 10-12 Short Story, for their piece Despicable Blood, as well as Farhan Andalib, for Years 10-12 Poetry, brother i sorry. As well as this, but not forgotten, An Thu Le Le, for their Encouragement Award for Sinking, in the category Years 10-12 Short Story.
Having achieved two awards – both Merits – for my poetry and short story, respectively named Why you deserve galaxies, Moonchild and Eve, Exiled, I feel immensely grateful for Lola, the MC and former co-leader of the CWC, the teachers, who have given both me and others incredible encouragement, and my peers, who have never stopped believing in me, who have given me, and others, the chance to forever bloom and dwell in the providence of the writing world.
Jashan Suran (Creative Writing Club Leader)
Year 12
The Hex-Zone
The hubbub of chatter weaves around the room as I send off the email. My eyes stray to the frame next to my computer. Inside is a gorgeous girl with a wide smile and glowing eyes. Maria. I smile to myself as I turn to where a massive window overlooks a bustling courtyard and busy road. Stifling a yawn, I face my computer and ready myself for the next task. Then everything goes black.
All chatter ceases. Then panic ensues. I hurriedly reach for my phone and on my flashlight. The light falls on my shocked co-worker, Anthony. It’s then I realise. It is noon. The only light source at this time of day comes from sunshine. There shouldn’t be any darkness. I whirl to the window in shock. Where the sun was minutes ago, a black void now sits.
57 years ago, humans were facing extinction. Neglect let the ozone layer disintegrate to nothing. Without its protection, nothing was shielding Earth from the sun’s deadly UV rays. Then Space-Corp created Hex-zone. A hexagonal-shaped steel sheet spanning hectares, stationed where the ozone layer was. Its movement is synchronised with Earth so regions facing the sun were sheltered by Hex-zone. Sunlight would filter through using transparency technology. It was a wild idea, but Hex-zone was successfully created and worked without issue. Until now.
“Gabriella, Anthony. My office, please,” Our supervisor, Dr. Steven Green, stands in his office on the right-hand side. All eyes follow me as I step past Steven and into his office.
“We have a problem”.
In the room with us is scientist, Dr. Lao. Steven activates a screen behind his desk. Huddling behind him, we read:
Critical systems failure. Immediate restart required.
“Hex-Zone’s collapsing,” Dr. Green says heavily. “The transparency function malfunctioning indicates imminent self-destruction. If we don’t restart Hex-Zone, it will shut down, forever.”
I can see the agitation in his eyes as he wrings his hands.
“We don’t have time to lose, we must act now,” Anthony nods in agreement as I scoff in disbelief. Everyone turns to me.
“Restarting means shutting it down first. It leaves Earth vulnerable to UV radiation. Millions may perish”. I remark angrily.
“Without restarting, Hex-Zone will crash, and Earth will constantly be vulnerable to UV. Billions will perish,” Steven retorts.
I open my mouth to respond but nothing comes out.
“We’re safe here,” Dr. Green coaxes gently. “We’ll stay in the underground bunker until it’s safe,”
“It’s not me I’m worried about,” I utter feebly. I know Steven’s right, but are we sentencing the world to death?
My shoulders sag as I relent.
“Fine. But I need to get my daughter first.”
Steven nods.
“I’m coming with you,” Anthony announces. With that, we exit the control room, and venture outside.
Maria’s kindergarten is a block away. As we sprint across the road and past the courtyard, I notice there’s a chill in the air. The lack of sun is already affecting the weather.
It’s then I realise how quiet it is. A shiver runs down my spine. Where is everyone? That’s when a store implodes. The shock sends me flying. I suck in my breath at the sight of blinding fire and raining glass.
Deserted venues. Illegal activity. People are scared. The sun has disappeared, and they don’t know why. They’re reacting the way humans respond when they’re frightened, by destroying everything in their path to reach normality again. Not restarting Hex-Zone not only puts humanity at risk from radiation, but also from themselves.
Shaking, we stand up, and we begin to run again.
People are pouring out of the kindergarten when we arrive. Parents with wailing babies, all rushing in and out. Sprinting to Maria’s room, I throw open the door and rush in. Sitting cross-legged are three abandoned children, one being Maria. Scooping her up, I look down Two other children look at me perplexed. My heart screams for me to take them with us, but Anthony pulls my elbow and I’m forced to turn away. Passing parents cradling children to their chests, children that may be dead soon, guilt begins to enclose me like a cloud.
The journey back gives Anthony and I no trouble. The second we reach the bunker, we collapse to the floor, gasping for breath. My co-workers are glued to a large screen. The screen flashes red and a countdown appears on the screen.
Shut down initiated. 36 hours till restart. Hex-Zone officially offline.
The horrified silence is deafening.
Tashi Mallawa
Year 9
Sinking
My soles sink into the sand as I survey the sea. Its endlessness makes me believe that the sky and ocean have become one. The currents tug at my legs and beg me to step in. Foamy sea water cuffs my ankles, it resembles a spider web and it seems like I am the prey. After kissing the shore, the waves retract, leaving ripples and floating particles of sand.
The stinging of the cold water seeps into my wounds reminding me of my existence. I’m starting to feel suffocated by the salty sea scent, but it is nothing compared to the stench of cigarettes that linger at home. The unfeeling tide rises to hold my hands, its comfort is the warmest I ever felt.
Soon the hem of my dress rises and begins to bob with the flow of the ocean. A melody forms from the teardrops that fall from my fingertips as I pluck out notes from the sea. The breeze lifts my hair into a dance and even when strands tangle into a vortex.
My shoulders cower as the sea pulls me into an embrace. Before the water was holding my hands but now it has a tight grip around my neck. My chest tightens from the overbearing weight, and I begin to grasp for air. With the water drowning out my hearing I am left alone with my thoughts and the fading memory of my mother’s smile. I take another step.
An Le
Year 10
Despicable Blood
Family. The people who are related to you and teach you how to handle the everyday stresses we face as human beings. I adore my family and the role I play in their lives, but ironically, I didn’t have a blood-related family of my own growing up.
Finding out about my adoption at the mere age of fourteen was not a highlight of my life. It felt as if my identity was strangling me, making my face turn blue, as it left me gasping there, all alone, trying to find myself once again. Whenever I left the house, I could feel my presence just screaming out to the world that I was adopted and a liar for calling my adoptees my family. I thought this made me stand out like a dark cloud on a sunny day.
Yet, it was not just the loss of identity that had me wrapped around life’s fingertips, it was the sense of discontent and mystery about why I was put up for adoption that was the real stringing pain within my heart. How could I rest knowing that my birth parents did not want me in their lives, treating me as if I was some sort of bee buzzing around them as they called for an exterminator to come and remove me.
The worst thing about this experience is that I wholeheartedly believed that I was unworthy of love. If my birth parents had been incapable of loving me, it was clear, I was unfit for the love of anyone else. The dreadful feeling that surrounded me daily of being despicable because of my blood was due to how I characterised myself as being adopted, which was further vocalised by the voices of my peers that were cluttering up my brain.
When I told people about how I was adopted as a teenager they laughed in my face as if I was an elephant on a tightrope. They completely forgot that family isn’t defined by blood, just like I had been forgetting for the past few months.
When we were young, all the way back to the 1950s, one of the things we depicted as a necessity to be within the same family is whether we “bleed the same bloodline”. Yet, as we were being forced to swallow what the system told us as if it was a pill that was going to cure our imperfections, it indirectly caused me to have a reaction and puff up like a balloon with the air not letting me escape.
I have come to terms that a person's family is the people they grew up with and who have raised them to become the person they are and am now able to stroll on the air which had once confined me within the system. I now understand that your family is there to care for you, help you, and love you, just like mine had.
My mum always told me when I was growing up that I was just a “gooseberry”, someone who chased something that did not want you. Looking back to this time period in my life, I understand what she was talking about.
I spent too much time in my childhood worrying about the family who gave me up rather than the loving one I had at home that choose me. Getting adopted didn’t strip me away from my identity but directed me towards another path where the flowers were flourishing, and the sun glimmered.
My future was not set in stone with a spell around it to curse me with the feeling of despair and misery, but one where I had control. Being adopted gave me new hopes in life and is now a part of my identity that I don’t try to outrun, it is what has made me the person I am.
I wish as a child I didn’t think about the what-ifs of life, which damaged my self-image for what had felt like an eternity. Had I known my blood was not tainted, I am sure I would have not been repellent to my story and origins. Yet these are the experiences I needed in life to teach me the value of enjoying what you have and that you need to live your life to the fullest.
My blood was never despicable.
Ebony Noller
Year 10
Eve, Exiled
Tonight, under the milky intoxication of the moon, it was warmer than usual. The midnight sun was yellow no more, instead a pale, crème hue as the darkness dominated the sky. The crimson unwieldy curtains of the grand hall would resist its restricting drapery hooks, sighing happily as it let in the glistening hall the luminescence of the celestial full moon. And resembling the pawn of the oceans in front of it, the crowds in front of me were waves of hasty, “hi-how-are-you-how’s-the-little-ones-guess-what-I’m-in-the-middle-of-my-divorce-and-I-lost-my-job-and-obviously-your-feelings-aren’t-as-valid-as-mine-but-anyways-rant-about-your-little-cherubs, you girl-boss!”
The darkness was bewitching as it lured the wedding guests in a state of incessant sleeplessness. The drapery breathed against my neck behind me.
I shivered.
Victoria was hot and steamy during the day, when the meadow fields shine in a landscape of solid gold and the water would be soaking up the sun’s heat, ever so thirsty. And when the sun dies, the cities would freeze, icy wisps of air seeping into people’s lungs, the melancholic moans of the midnight solstice as it cradled each soul to unconsciousness.
It did not do me favour. I seethed.
She sat in her sparking throne labelled ‘RESERVED: Eve Beauford.’ Her face in spotlight by the phosphorescence of the light blue fountain beside her, a man beside her whispered something in her ear. Her eyes scrunched up in blissful gaiety as she laughed, her curls falling back to the front of her face as she tried to tuck the strand behind her ear.
She smiled, all teeth.
She was so pretty and happy. My breath hitched.
“Can’t. Understand. Poetry!” she would say by way of explanation.
She was one who came feline and demand; ignoring the others; Eve, who sat as still as a statue through classes and droned on in her essays. There were detentions and earnest talks. Lesson after lesson the teachers would call her to stay back and I would walk out the door, watching her bored expression behind me.
Sometimes I would sit down with her in the canefield at the crepuscular dawn of twilight, jumping the fences of the mill residence, sneaking quietly in order to avoid getting caught. They’d tell my parents for sure.
“What do you want to do after high school?”
“I don’t know,” Eve sighed. “I love those,” she changed the subject, pointing upwards where the startling crimson flaunted itself against the sky.
“Why?” I interrogated.
She was suddenly angry. “Why? You always want to know why. You’re so obsessed with me. You mock me because I’m dumb and you’re smart. You pretend that you’re all humble but deep down, you’re a monster. You make me cry. I feel so daft and empty-headed and thick around you. I just like the sky, that is all. It’s orange and pretty. You spoil my life. I hate you.”
She doesn’t walk off. Me and her sit in silence for the next hour. She sighs and I breathe quietly. The twilight sky soon turns into an abyss of cosmic bodies. The moon seems brighter than usual.
“I’m leaving Victoria soon,” I tremble, “For someplace else. After I finish high school. Some place with bewitching meadows and beautiful flowers.”
“What do the meadow fields look like?” she sniffed. And then: “Do you imagine us running through them?” Eve would turn her prominent hazel eyes, watchful under her lashes.
“All the time, Eve,” I would tell her. I looked to her and went to intertwine my hands with hers, the way friends connect in times of abysmal hardship or blissful euphoria, but then my heart failed me, and I then would walk back home, trying not to trample against the long reeds, whispering,
“Eve, I love you.”
The voluminous burst of sounds in the award ceremony woke me from my slumber, and I leave my seat to stay solitary. A streak of white lightning did a quick dance across the midnight sky. The thunder clapped almost soon after, chuckling. I hated these people. These were the kind who’d quote Al-Khansa without knowing her painful yet enduring love for her brothers, who’ll fawn over Indian food but turn their racial filters on, who’ll take their politics with a latte when I take mine with burnt asphalt under my knees. Happiness has difficulty breathing nowadays, and all people do every day is smile with their friends and practice CPR.
Eyelids heavy, I decide to leave. I did not look back.
Tonight, under the milky intoxication of the moon, it was warmer than usual.
Jashandeep Suran
Year 12
Why you deserve galaxies, moonchild
there is something moon iridescent and fiery-flavoured of you
there is a flame that awakes within your soul and for a moment it feels like déjà vu
the way you speak, mountains tremble for aeons
and your ambitions and passions send shockwaves to the world.
god, how much destruction did it take for you to become this silent?
because underneath your “friendly aura” or “gentle nature”
there is a feminine rage so major
it bleeds in your mouth, a bitter aftertaste
blood pumping, heart fast-paced.
frankly, aren’t you the needle that embroiders the most exquisite tapestries?
child, you have etched beautiful success and engraved pride and in your fingers
you have nothing but sheer indefatigability
and the day you decided to suffocate in it, the warmth engulfed you
by the morning people found your body, a silhouette woven between its threads.
see, you crave this thing called success so much
you were adamant on it as a child when they told you that you were incompetent as a woman, that permanent smudge
tainted onto your face with a permanent marker
moonchild, you have gone to the depths of the oceans and trudged through dense jungles
just to prove you and your kind weren’t terrorists?
just to prove that you could make your father and mother proud?
you stand so brave
outnumbered by the blinding starts tonight
standing on top of the world, does the height
not scare you no more?
looking at you
i only think how the ambition in your eyes are clusters of divine empires
and your hopes and aspirations: remnants of galaxies’ embers
i know you’re going to be worshipped one day, moonchild.
the heart blooms in wanting; remember, moonchild, stay insatiable for success.
Jashandeep Suran
Year 12
brother i sorry
I write
Because I haven’t written lately
And you live on in these lines
Otherwise my memories
They whisper me lies.
I write because
I struggle a lot
Often battling my own thoughts
My worst enemy
Wouldn’t be here
Unless I learnt to
Forgive me
A thousand times.
I write to process what happened
Tell me is it the same for you?
Its been the same
For me, many days now
Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow
But tomorrow never comes.
Tell me do you live in tomorrow as it
Turns to today
And today is torture
Tomorrow is a day
I never got to see.
I write to attain Peace
Godly status, complexes, material successes
Never did appeal to me.
Yet I knell
To any that are Happy
Or attain Peace
These are Things I know little about
I write because that's what
My counsellor told me to do
To process my trauma
She has an aura
Of Calmness and Tranquility
I wish to attain
I write because its what keeps me from insanity
Seated on the edge of Sanity
Looking out on the sea of grief
I write because it passes the time
They told me
That time heals all wounds
So I’ve been waiting patiently
Bleeding steadily
Perhaps
Tomorrow it’ll stop.
I write to rhyme
Call it poetry
Call it rap
Call it a bundle of lies
A lid to the bottle that’s pain.
Brother, I write
Cause I’m sorry
I wish I was better
I wish things turned out differently
Call you one last time
Tell you, I loved you dearly
Just didn’t know it then.
Brother, I’m sorry
I haven’t written lately, because every time I write
You come alive.
*epilogue*
I write because
No one did believe in me
Somehow you saw something
And told me to keep it alive within me
Ingenuity
I made a promise
Inspired by your Eulogy
I’ll keep going for you
Even if the light at the end of the tunnel I cannot see.
Farhan Andalib
Year 12
__________________________________________
Poetry in Action Incursion
On Tuesday 11 July, the Year nine students got the opportunity to view the International Anthem play run by the Poetry In Action company as a part of an English incursion. This incredible company aims to transfigure spoken-word poetry into exhilarating theatrical performances. They have performed across Australia and internationally. The Year nines had the honour of watching a live show on Tuesday.
The play was interesting and thought-provoking, as well as hilarious. The play told a story of a trio of Australians who, in the span of 40 minutes, must find a poem or song to perform at an international poetry competition. The characters quarrel over whether the best way to represent Australia is to have an upbeat and colourful performance, or to take a deeper and more sombre look into Australia’s historical identity. The play indirectly discusses the importance of acknowledging and respecting different people’s experiences, as well as how to celebrate an entire nation full of diverse and unique people.
Overall, the Year nine students were thoroughly engaged and entertained by the performance and were grateful they had the opportunity to view the play. The play will also assist year 9 students in their current assessment that explores Indigenous Australian history and problems Indigenous people face today. It will hopefully give them a more eye-opening perspective to their current area of study. International Anthem was a thrill to watch, and hopefully won’t be the last production the students get to experience this year.
Tashi Mallawa
Year 9
