Member's Writing Competition

Summer 2025 - Competition Winners

Thank you to everyone who entered the Summer 2025 Writing Competition.

Congratulations to Jan Dean, D.M. Dorahy and Suzie West, whose winning entries are featured below.

Highly commended entries: Pip Ahern and Tessa Moriarty.

Jan Dean, 'The Bridge'

1st prize – $100

The Bridge

Could dreaming a bridge to a lost friend, soothe those who sorrow?

Your bridge over the pond stays green, like Monet’s, which seems

a suitable camouflage in an Australian context, an example of your refined taste.

My bridge will be scarlet, like ones in Japan, calling, Stop, see me, stay awhile.

Let’s dream. You captured my imagination when you described your fish

surfacing for nibbles, making little o’s with their mouths. I visualise

lit paper lanterns at night, baulked from their drift by lotus and waterlilies.

In honour of our past, countless coffee and cake dates, I should include

a stone bench, instead of a table and chairs, but you cannot be replaced.

There’ll be a stone water basin with a bamboo dipper for ritual cleansing.

This mish-mash of styles; zen, strolling and tea garden, will be blissful.

We both loved Japan, yet our visits there didn’t coincide. Your practice

of omotenashi, or wholehearted care for others extended beyond sado,

the tea ceremony. For me now, garden thoughts are desperate. My love

and I have diminished ability, echoing age. Selective viewings show mystic

remnants of his talent and enterprise. Roughness underfoot and lack of balance

do not merry gardeners make. I’ll forget flowers, replacing them with conifers

clipped into clouds, reflecting cumulus. Life will be level. If I decide to move

unharmed, through raked gravel, I will at a whim. While the front yard mocks

dream on, I realise this place could be an ideal space to converse, in gratitude.

Prompt:

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

D.M.Dorahy, 'Rewriting Austen'

2nd Prize – $75

Rewriting Austen

Love she said leaves me cold and

Disappointed

Of all the emotions its

Pangs drive deepest

The grief outweighs the joys

For even though the

Balm of time will erase the

Finest moments of

The passion shared and

Certainly, forgetting helps, but

Is there any salve for a

Friendship lost?

Prompt:

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Suzie West, 'Rainforest Creek'

3rd Prize – $50

Rainforest Creek

It is hot. Sweat dribbles down between my breasts. I tear my clothes off and throw myself into the green water feet first. My body sinks to the bottom. Relief from the heat is instant. I dive down and anchor myself to the bottom with my hands. I exhale and watch my air bubbles meander up towards the surface. And then I see him.

The water’s movement distorts the face, but I know it is a man’s face. Who the fuck is he?

I need air, but I also need to escape. I cannot surface beneath him, he is a stranger, and I am naked. Clinging to rocks, I crawl underwater towards a massive boulder on the other side of the creek and surface behind it, under a canopy of tree ferns.

Hidden, I watch him. He scans the surface of the water. Is he looking for me? Did he spot me underwater? Does he realise I’m not wearing swimmers? Who is he? I see him pick up my clothes—first my shorts, then my shirt. Oh my God, he is smelling my shirt. Please don’t touch my undies; If you do, I’ll know you are a pervert.

I’m not young, and I’m not old either, but I’m too young to die. Stop panicking! I take a closer look at him. He’s bearded, the beard grey, and his hair short and brown. He is wearing dark shorts and a dress shirt. He is a plain Johnny, nondescript. He looks around again then turns and looks behind him, then bends and looks into the depths of the water. He stands and scratches his groin. His hand reaches around to his back pocket and takes out something black. Is it a knife or a gun? I’m not sure. He turns and calls out, but I cannot make out what he is saying. He drops my shirt back on the ground and walks into the bush. He takes the path that leads out onto the main road. As quick as he came, he is gone.

I stay in the water until my body shivers from cold. Darkness is approaching and the man has not returned. I move out from underneath the tree ferns. My hands are numb and blue with cold. I silently glide across the top of the water towards my clothes. There is no sign of the man. I cannot hear him. I dress in a rush and run to my car, which is further along the track and away from the main road.

As I head for home, I thank the universe for my safety. I will not swim naked or alone ever again.

My mobile rings, it’s work. Come in early tomorrow, meet our new boss.

Arriving, I open the office door and a stranger meets me, but he is not a stranger, he is the man from the river. He is my new boss.

Prompt:

In the knowing, there is a knowing

In the unanswered, comes an answer

E.J. McGrorey, Alice and Buried (Grieve Vol. 11)

Entries close Friday 7 February 2025, 5 pm.
Submit your entries via the form below
The contest is for members only. Become a member
Maximum word count: 500 words (poems max 20 lines)
Max 2 submissions per member
Winners announced late February

Guidelines

Prizes

First Prize: $100

Second Prize: $75

Third Prize: $50

Winning entries will be published on the Hunter Writers’ Centre website.

Writing Prompts

Write a piece inspired by one of the quotes or images below

Some look for the easy way. But there is no easy way. We must endure. And find another way. One life. One short life. We make it good.

– Hayley Lawerence, Inside the Tiger

After we ate we was silent on our blankets looking out across the mighty Great Divide I never seen this country before it were like a fairy story landscape the clear and windy skies was filled with diamonds the jagged black outlines of the ranges were a panorama.

— Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.

— Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

The sick man died, at last. The part of him that suffered has been consumed. But his wife. What will she do with all the love?

― Helen Garner, One Day I’ll Remember This

in the not knowing, there is a knowing

in the unanswered, comes an answer

— E.J. McGrorey, Alice and Buried (Grieve Vol. 11)

A journey along that river, on first trace, seemed simple. I studied the map more carefully. I was struck by how the Hunter region’s shape looked like a side view of the biggest section on the human brain, the cerebrum.

– Scott Bevan, Return To The Hunter