Task developed by Bonn Hatton, A.B.

Paterson College, 2019

STATE

DA VINCI DECATHLON 2019

CELEBRATING THE ACADEMIC GIFTS OF STUDENTS
IN YEARS 5 & 6

ENGLISH
TEAM NUMBER _____________

1 2 3 4 5 6 Total Rank
/10 /10 /10 /9 /14 /2 /55
Complete the above table with question numbers and marks as required.

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 Task developed by Bonn Hatton, A.B. Paterson College, 2019

QUESTION ONE
SPELLING (10 MARKS)
Ten words will be read out to you. Please write your answers below.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

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 Task developed by Bonn Hatton, A.B. Paterson College, 2019

QUESTION TWO
EXPLORE THEIR SURROUNDINGS (10 MARKS)

In literature, there have been many characters who encounter varying landscapes on their

journey and, as a result, develop a deeper understanding of the world around them. Fill in the

missing blanks with the correct answer.

TITLE AUTHOR QUOTE

“We lived in the Portland Avenue Stacks, a
Cline sprawling hive of discoloured tin shoeboxes
rusting on the shores of I-40, just west of
Oklahoma City’s decaying skyscraper core. It
was a collection of over five hundred individual
stacks, all connected to each other by a
makeshift network of recycled pipes, girders,
support beams, and footbridges …”

“Our house is almost at the edge of the Seam. I

only have to pass a few gates to reach the
scruffy field called the Meadow. Separating the
Meadow from the woods, in fact enclosing all of
District 12, is a high chain-link fence topped with
barbed-wire loops …”

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not

a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of
worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare,
sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to
eat: it was a hobbit-hold, and that means
comfort.”

20,000 Leagues “The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of

under the Sea the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and
healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is
never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.
The sea is only the embodiment of a
supernatural and wonderful existence. It is
nothing but love and emotion; it is the Living
Infinite.”

“The castle of Cair Paravel on its little hill

C.S. Lewis towered up above them; before them were the
sands, with rocks and little pools of salt water,
and seaweed, and the smell of the sea and long
miles of bluish-green waves breaking for ever

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 Task developed by Bonn Hatton, A.B. Paterson College, 2019

and ever on the beach. And oh, the cry of the

seagulls! Have you ever heard it? Can you
remember?”

“Below the waterfall (and this was the most

Roald Dahl astonishing sight of all), a whole mass of
enormous glass pipes were dangling down into
the river from somewhere high up in the ceiling!
They really were enormous, those pipes. There
must have been a dozen of them at least, and
they were sucking up the brownish muddy water
from the river and carrying it away to goodness
knows where …”

“So, that was Nature's way. The mosquito felt

John Marsden pain and panic but the dragonfly knew nothing of
cruelty. Humans would call it evil, the big
dragonfly destroying the mosquito and ignoring
the little insects suffering. Yet humans hated
mosquitoes too, calling them vicious and
bloodthirsty. All these words, words like 'evil' and
'vicious', they meant nothing to Nature. Yes, evil
was a human invention.”

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 Task developed by Bonn Hatton, A.B. Paterson College, 2019

QUESTION 3
EXCERPT FROM HENRY LAWSON’S ‘THE DROVER’S WIFE’
(10 MARKS)
The two-roomed house is built of round timber, slabs, and stringy-bark, and floored with split slabs. A
big bark kitchen standing at one end is larger than the house itself, veranda included.
Bush all round — bush with no horizon, for the country is flat. No ranges in the distance. The bush
consists of stunted, rotten native apple-trees. No undergrowth. Nothing to relieve the eye save the
darker green of a few she-oaks which are sighing above the narrow, almost waterless creek. Nineteen
miles to the nearest sign of civilization — a shanty on the main road.
The drover, an ex-squatter, is away with sheep. His wife and children are left here alone.
Four ragged, dried-up-looking children are playing about the house. Suddenly one of them yells:
“Snake! Mother, here’s a snake!”
The gaunt, sun-browned bush woman dashes from the kitchen, snatches her baby from the
ground, holds it on her left hip, and reaches for a stick.
“Where is it?”
“Here! gone into the wood-heap!” yells the eldest boy — a sharp-faced urchin of eleven. “Stop
there, mother! I’ll have him. Stand back! I’ll have the beggar!”
“Tommy, come here, or you’ll be bit. Come here at once when I tell you, you little wretch!”
The youngster comes reluctantly, carrying a stick bigger than himself. Then he yells, triumphantly:
“There it goes — under the house!” and darts away with club uplifted. At the same time the big,
black, yellow-eyed dog-of-all-breeds, who has shown the wildest interest in the proceedings, breaks
his chain and rushes after that snake. He is a moment late, however, and his nose reaches the crack
in the slabs just as the end of its tail disappears. Almost at the same moment the boy’s club comes
down and skins the aforesaid nose. Alligator takes small notice of this, and proceeds to undermine the
building; but he is subdued after a struggle and chained up. They cannot afford to lose him.
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Near midnight. The children are all asleep and she sits there still, sewing and reading by turns.
From time to time she glances round the floor and wall-plate, and, whenever she hears a noise, she
reaches for the stick. The thunderstorm comes on, and the wind, rushing through the cracks in the slab
wall, threatens to blow out her candle. She places it on a sheltered part of the dresser and fixes up a
newspaper to protect it. At every flash of lightning, the cracks between the slabs gleam like polished
silver. The thunder rolls, and the rain comes down in torrents.
Alligator lies at full length on the floor, with his eyes turned towards the partition. She knows by
this that the snake is there. There are large cracks in that wall opening under the floor of the dwelling-
house.

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 Task developed by Bonn Hatton, A.B. Paterson College, 2019

……………………………………………………………………………………………
It must be near one or two o’clock. The fire is burning low. Alligator lies with his head resting on
his paws, and watches the wall. He is not a very beautiful dog, and the light shows numerous old
wounds where the hair will not grow. He is afraid of nothing on the face of the earth or under it. He will
tackle a bullock as readily as he will tackle a flea. He hates all other dogs — except kangaroo-dogs —
and has a marked dislike to friends or relations of the family. They seldom call, however. He sometimes
makes friends with strangers. He hates snakes and has killed many, but he will be bitten some day and
die; most snake-dogs end that way.
Now and then the bush woman lays down her work and watches, and listens, and thinks. She
thinks of things in her own life, for there is little else to think about.
The rain will make the grass grow, and this reminds her how she fought a bush-fire once while her
husband was away. The grass was long, and very dry, and the fire threatened to burn her out. She put
on an old pair of her husband’s trousers and beat out the flames with a green bough, till great drops of
sooty perspiration stood out on her forehead and ran in streaks down her blackened arms. The sight of
his mother in trousers greatly amused Tommy, who worked like a little hero by her side, but the terrified
baby howled lustily for his “mummy.” The fire would have mastered her but for four excited bushmen
who arrived in the nick of time. It was a mixed-up affair all round; when she went to take up the baby
he screamed and struggled convulsively, and Alligator, trusting more to the child’s sense than his own
instinct, charged furiously, and (being old and slightly deaf) did not in his excitement at first recognize
his mistress’s voice, but continued to hang on to the moleskins until choked off by Tommy with a saddle-
strap. The dog’s sorrow for his blunder, and his anxiety to let it be known that it was all a mistake, was
as evident as his ragged tail and a twelve-inch grin could make it. It was a glorious time for the boys; a
day to look back to, and talk about, and laugh over for many years.
She has few pleasures to think of as she sits here alone by the fire, on guard against a snake. All
days are much the same to her; but on Sunday afternoon she dresses herself, tidies the children,
smartens up baby, and goes for a lonely walk along the bush-track, pushing an old perambulator in
front of her. She does this every Sunday. She takes as much care to make herself and the children
look smart as she would if she were going to do the block in the city. There is nothing to see, however,
and not a soul to meet. You might walk for twenty miles along this track without being able to fix a point
in your mind, unless you are a bushman. This is because of the everlasting, maddening sameness of
the stunted trees — that monotony which makes a man long to break away and travel as far as trains
can go, and sail as far as ship can sail — and farther.

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 Task developed by Bonn Hatton, A.B. Paterson College, 2019

QUESTIONS
1. Identify two ways Lawson uses language to help the readers visualise how isolating and
uninviting the Australian landscape can be in the opening two paragraphs.

(2 marks)

2. What language technique is used in the sentence and why is it used?

“The thunderstorm comes on, and the wind, rushing through the cracks in the slab wall,
threatens to blow out her candle.”

(2 marks)

3. Find an example of a simile and sibilance in the text, and explain its effect.

SIMILE SIBILANCE
Example: Example:

………………………………………….. …………………………………………..

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………………………………………….. …………………………………………..

Effect: Effect:

………………………………………….. …………………………………………..

………………………………………….. …………………………………………..

………………………………………….. …………………………………………..

(4 marks)

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 Task developed by Bonn Hatton, A.B. Paterson College, 2019

4. How does Lawson explore the theme of resilience in the story?

(2 marks)

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 Task developed by Bonn Hatton, A.B. Paterson College, 2019

QUESTION 4
‘THE PAST’ BY OODGEROO NOONUCCAL (9 MARKS)
Let no one say the past is dead.
The past is all about us and within.
Haunted by tribal memories, I know
this little now, whose long making
is so much of the past.
Tonight here in Suburbia as I sit
in easy chair before electric heater,
warmed by the red glow, I fall into dream:
I am away
at the camp fire in the bush, among
my own people, sitting on the ground.
No walls about me,
The stars over me,
The tall surrounding trees that stir in the wind
making their own music.
Soft cries of the night coming to us, there
where we are one with old Nature’s lives
Known and unknown,
in scenes where we belong but have now forsaken.
Deep chair and electric radiator
are but since yesterday.
But a thousand thousand camp fires in the forest
are in my blood.
Let none tell me the past is wholly gone.
Now is so small a part of time, so small a part
Of all the race years that have moulded me.

QUESTIONS
1. What type of noun is ‘past’ (in the opening lines)?

(1 mark)

2. How does the adjectives ‘little’ and ‘accidental’ contribute to the overall meaning of the
poem?

(1 mark)

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 Task developed by Bonn Hatton, A.B. Paterson College, 2019

3. What technique is used in ‘cries of night’ and what does it mean?

(2 marks)

4. What technique is employed in the following line:

“But a thousand thousand camp fires in the forest Are in my blood.” And what
does it mean?

(2 marks)

5. What does the electric heater symbolise?

(1 mark)

6. Give an example of juxtaposition between the past and present and how it contributes to
the overall meaning of the poem.

(2 marks)

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 Task developed by Bonn Hatton, A.B. Paterson College, 2019

QUESTION 5
THE CRAFT OF WRITING (14 MARKS)
You have to complete a number of writing activities based on the following images.

Each activity has different challenges.

ACTIVITY 1

Writing in the third-person, describe in exactly 30 words what this person is thinking. You must
include one example of personification, and the noun “melancholic”. Try to convey the
character’s inner most feelings.

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 Task developed by Bonn Hatton, A.B. Paterson College, 2019

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RUBRIC

Criteria MARKS

Writing in third person 0 1

30 words exactly 0 1

Use of personification 0 1

Included “melancholic” 0 1

Conveyed character’s feelings 0 1

TOTAL _____ / 5

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 Task developed by Bonn Hatton, A.B. Paterson College, 2019

ACTIVITY 2

Imagine that you are arriving in a foreign city for the first time. Describe your emotions as you
look outside and see the city for the first time as pictured above. You must write exactly thirty
words. You must include a simile, and the adjective “illuminate”.

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 Task developed by Bonn Hatton, A.B. Paterson College, 2019

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RUBRIC

Criteria MARKS

Emotions have been described 0 1

30 words exactly 0 1

Use of a simile 0 1

0 1
Included “illuminate”

TOTAL _____ / 4

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 Task developed by Bonn Hatton, A.B. Paterson College, 2019

ACTIVITY 3

Imagine that you are an explorer travelling into the Amazon. Describe in thirty words exactly

the setting in the picture above. Try to capture the noise of the forest and what you see. You

must include onomatopoeia and an example of sibilance.

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 Task developed by Bonn Hatton, A.B. Paterson College, 2019

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RUBRIC

Criteria MARKS

Captures the noise of the forest 0 1

Colours of the forest have been described 0 1

30 words exactly 0 1

0 1
Use of onomatopoeia

0 1
Sibilance included

TOTAL _____ / 5

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 Task developed by Bonn Hatton, A.B. Paterson College, 2019

QUESTION SIX
VISUAL LITERACY (2 MARKS)

IMAGE 1

Q1. What is the message ………………………………………………………………………

in this picture?
(1 mark) ………………………………………………………………………

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Q2. What does the road ………………………………………………………………………

symbolise?
(1 mark) ………………………………………………………………………

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END OF PAPER

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