By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
THIS month 15-year-old Hayley Hickey stood looking over Anzac Cove and was lost for words.
The current Year 10 student from Fountain Gate Secondary College was one of 12 high school kids across the state selected for this year’s prestigious Premier’s Spirit of Anzac Prize, which sees the group embark on an overseas study tour of WWI sites.
“I just remember being speechless almost the whole time in Gallipoli because it’s hard to imagine that they actually fought there and they landed there and such horrors had happened there when the views were so pretty,” Hayley said, after returning from the tour this week.
“The views were a manipulation, kind of. You were left speechless just thinking of what had happened under your feet.”
The two-week study tour gave the group the opportunity to visit a range of historical war sites throughout different towns and regions, including Lemnos, Gallipoli, the Western Front, and Belgium.
But long before Hayley made this incredible journey, she was selected from a group of 700 students who entered into the competition.
Hayley said she was encouraged to enter after her humanities teacher Belinda Irving had been impressed by Hayley’s ever-increasing passion for the competition and the path of historical research it had led her on.
Ms Irving went on the study tour herself as a teacher chaperone in 2013.
“I was going to do an essay but then I wanted to do a short story so I could approach the topic with facts but with more emotive language,” Hayley said.
“So then I wrote the short story and I got it drafted by Ms Irving and she gave me lots of feedback on it and then she recommended that I enter the competition and I hadn’t really thought about the competition before that, I was just trying to get the assignment done.
“And then so I thought, it couldn’t really hurt, so I entered the competition.”
Ms Irving said Hayley’s fictional entry, which drew on real facts, looked at the war from an alternative perspective.
“It was a different way of looking at and I hadn’t seen it before so I thought that would be a great way to enter,” Ms Irving said.
“And I encouraged all my kids to enter, but Hayley, after she had submitted it and she got really into it, I’ve gone, OK you really need to enter.”
Hayley was chosen as one of the 28 finalists and after a successful interview, she was selected as one of the 12 high-achieving students that would make the trip to Europe.
“I hoped to feel a real connection to the Anzacs and learn more about WWI,” Hayley said.
“And I think the aim of the tour is to throw kids who are like-minded together and have them be interested in the Anzacs so they can keep the spirit alive for youths still going today, 100 years on.”
While on the tour the 12 students were tasked with selecting their own digger, who had served in the war, who they could commemorate while they were in Europe.
Hayley was extremely moved by the story of the three Seabrook brothers – Theo, William, and George – who died at the Battle of Menin Road, and she chose them as her Diggers to remember.
“I really felt for their mother, Fanny Seabrook. She lost the three boys within 24 hours because they were all hit from the same shell,” Hayley said.
“So that really got me and I wanted to commemorate what she suffered, and commemorate them and their sacrifices.”
Hayley laid a poppy for Theo and George at Menin Gate and was able to do the same for William, who was buried at another cemetery.
Hayley’s journey came after former Fountain Gate Secondary student Travis Reid took part in the Spirit of Anzac study tour the year before.
Ms Irving said her own experience on the trip had inspired her to encourage her students to apply for the competition.
“When I came back I was more enthused and I was encouraging the kids – this is what I saw, this is what’s happened there,” she said.
“And I became more enthusiastic about getting kids to have that same experience.”
