He has staked a claim a few metres from my apartment, strategically placed between the liquor shop and the junction that gives Kings Cross its name. He is not the only beggar in the area.
There are many. If you are to give a rough summary, then the most common are the temporary beggars who, grimacing with severe hangovers, crop up of a Sunday or on Monday mornings, wanting money for extra drinks or just enough money to flee back home from their disastrous weekend. Then there are the importune men who hover around the station pleading for money to buy a train ticket.Their familiar cry is for "spare change", in the hope the impatient commuter will palm them a 50 cent coin just to get rid of them. There are the severe alcoholics, of course, who need just enough change to dash off to the hardware shop to buy their metho.
They slump in alcoves or on the doorsteps of apartment blocks and shops, their faces looking like giant bruises, holding out trembling hands to ask for money. Most do not stay long. They either die or vanish into a drying-out facility with disturbing frequency. Then there are the crazies. The past 20 or so years have seen an influx of madmen.
Thrown out of asylums because of government cutbacks and society indifference, they wander through the streets muttering to themselves, cursing God, or suddenly loom in front of you with wild grins demanding money. The worst are the ice addicts. If there is a common topic of conversation among long-standing Cross residents discussing drugs, it's that heroin addicts are excellent people to deal with compared with ice addicts, who are aggressive and unpredictable. 2 ©2009 HSC ADVANCED ENGLISH – PRACTICE EXAM QUESTIONS ETA2009/A __________________________________________________________________________________I have been physically attacked a couple of times by agitated men at the mercy of the chemical. They make the worst beggars, because by the time they get up enough courage to beg they are simmering with hostility, having been up for two or three days without sleep, and any knock-back they get is an affront to their self-esteem. They yell and hurl abuse at the frightened man or woman whom a few seconds before they were addressing with a brittle charm that barely concealed their impulse to attack them.
One late afternoon I saw Terry in his regular place, drinking a can of beer - which was unusual.He patted the space next to him and asked me to join him. I told him I didn't drink beer. "That's OK, Louis, just sit here. " So I sat with him and talked. It was fascinating to see the world from his perspective.
It was amazing how many businessmen looked down at him (maybe us) with expressions of absolute contempt. Others passed by, pretending indifference. A few locals greeted him by name, which pleased him no end. I asked him if he was ever beaten up. "Once or twice by hoons, but you gotta accept that. " I questioned him as to why he didn't stay at the hostel where he slept and get the dole.
That's a living death. A real living death," he replied. After an hour, I stood up. "That's my world, Louis," he remarked cheerfully.
We've been haggling for a long time. I tell him I'm quite prepared to give him $10 or $15 at the beginning of the week, rather than doling out coins every time I see him. I used to think he had calculated the loose change I give him adds up to more than that. Now I'm not too sure. I think he's afraid I won't have to talk to him on the other nights of the week. And that's the thing about Terry and two other beggars I speak with.
If they wanted to, they could shift into a hostel and collect welfare payments and not have to be outside - sometimes in appalling weather - but there is something else that is common to the three of them. They may be loners but begging gives them an identity. Wealthy newcomers may despise them but long-term residents know them by name and stop and chat to them, sometimes giving them money. I think the important thing is that they feel they are known and accepted, not as beggars, not as faceless names in some bureaucratic hostel that seems like death's waiting room, but as people. There is something wonderful about that.
Louis Nowra November 7, 2008 (Louis Nowra is a playwright, novelist and screenwriter. This is an edited extract from his essay in Griffith Review 22: Money, Sex, Power. ) 3 ©2009 HSC ADVANCED ENGLISH – PRACTICE EXAM QUESTIONS ETA2009/A __________________________________________________________________________________ Text Two - Poem A Green Cornfield The earth was green, the sky was blue: I saw and heard one sunny morn A skylark hang between the two, A singing speck above the corn; A stage below, in gay accord, White butterflies danced on the wing, And still the singing skylark soared, And silent sank and soared to sing.The cornfield stretched a tender green To right and left beside my walks; I knew he had a nest unseen Somewhere among the million stalks. And as I paused to hear his song While swift the sunny moments slid, Perhaps his mate sat listening long, And listened longer than I did.
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) 4 ©2009 HSC ADVANCED ENGLISH – PRACTICE EXAM QUESTIONS ETA2009/A __________________________________________________________________________________ Text Three –Advertisement 5 ©2009HSC ADVANCED ENGLISH – PRACTICE EXAM QUESTIONS ETA2009/A __________________________________________________________________________________ Text Four - Prose fiction extract And Raveloe was a village where many of the old echoes lingered, undrowned by new voices. Not that it was one of those barren parishes lying on the outskirts of civilisation – inhabited by meagre sheep and thinly-scattered shepherds: on the contrary, it lay in the rich central plain of what we are pleased to call Merry England, and held farms which, speaking from a spiritual point of view, paid highly-desirable tithes.But it was nestled in a snug well-wooded hollow, quite an hour’s journey on horseback from any turnpike, where it was never reached by the vibrations of the coach-horn, or of public opinion. It was an important looking village, with a fine old church and large churchyard in the heart of it, and two or three large brick-and-stone homesteads, with well-walled orchards and ornamental eathercocks, standing close upon the road, and lifting more imposing fronts than the rectory, which peeped from among the trees on the other side of the churchyard: - a village which showed at once the summits of its social life, and told the practised eye that there was no great park and manor-house in the vicinity, but that there were several chiefs in Raveloe who could farm badly quite at their ease, drawing enough money from their bad farming, in those war times, to live in a rollicking fashion, and keep a jolly Christmas, Whitsun, and Easter tide.It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had first come to Raveloe; he was then simply a pallid young man, with prominent, short-sighted eyes, whose appearance would have had nothing strange for people of average culture and experience, but for the villagers near whom he had come to settle it had mysterious peculiarities which corresponded with the exceptional nature of his occupation*, and his advent from an unknown region called ‘North’ard’.
So had his way of life: - he invited no comer to step across his door-sill, and he never strolled into the village to drink a pint at the Rainbow, or to gossip at the wheelwright’s: he sought no man or woman, save for the purposes of his calling, or in order to supply himself with necessaries; and it was soon clear to the Raveloe lasses that he would never urge one of them to accept him against her will – quite as if he had heard them declare that they would never marry a dead man come to life again.This view of Marner’s personality was not without another ground than his pale face and unexampled eyes; for Jem Rodney, the mole-catcher, averred that one evening as he was returning homeward he saw Silas Marner leaning against a stile with a heavy bag on his back, instead of resting the bag on the stile as a man in his senses would have done; and that, on coming up to him, he saw that Marner’s eyes were set like a dead man’s, and he spoke to him and shook him, and his limbs were stiff, and his hands clutched the bag as if they’d been made of iron; but just as he had made up his mind that the weaver was dead, he came all right again, like, as you might say, in the winking of an eye, and said ‘Good-night’, and walked off. ] *Silas was a weaver from Silas Marner by George Elliot Questions Marks Text One a) What is the tone/ attitude of the writer in this passage? OR What does Louis Nowra see as being important to Terry? 2 marks Text Two b) How does sense imagery contribute to the main idea of the poem? 2 marks Text Three c) What reaction does the composer of Text Three wish to evoke in the responder? 1 mark 6 ©2009 HSC ADVANCED ENGLISH – PRACTICE EXAM QUESTIONS ETA2009/A __________________________________________________________________________________Text Four d) Explain how the first paragraph of Text Four prepares us for the villagers’ reactions to Silas Marner in the next paragraph. 2 marks Texts One, Two, Three, Four e) Compare and contrast how form, structure and technique are utilised effectively in TWO of the above texts to present perspectives on Belonging 8 marks End of Question 1 (Version 1) Section II Question 2 Writing task __________________________________________________________________ In your answer you will be assessed on how well you: express understanding of the concept of Belonging in the context of your studies organise, develop and express ideas using language appropriate to audience, purpose and context __________________________________________________________________ Question Use ONE of the following quotations as a stimulus for a piece of writing that explores the concept of belonging.
a) It was fascinating to see the world from his perspective. OR b) Today, from far away, my heart remembers. OR c) He sought no man or woman. 7 ©2009 HSC ADVANCED ENGLISH – PRACTICE EXAM QUESTIONS ETA2009/A __________________________________________________________________________________ Section III Extended response Total marks (15) Attempt Question 3 Allow about 40 minutes for this section Answer the question in a writing booklet. Extra writing booklets are available.In your answer you will be assessed on how well you: demonstrate understanding of the concept of belonging in the context of your study analyse, explain and assess the ways the concept of belonging is represented in a variety of texts organise, develop and express ideas using language appropriate to audience, purpose and context Question 3 (15 marks) a) Everyone needs to belong.
. How far has your study of Belonging demonstrated this idea? In your response, refer to your prescribed text and at least ONE other related text of your own choosing. OR b) Belonging can involve the making of difficult choices. In your response refer to your prescribed text and ONE other related text of your own choosing.The prescribed texts for 2009-12 are: Prose Fiction or nonfiction Tan, Amy The Joy Luck Club Lahiri, Jhumpa, The Namesake Dickens, Charles, Great Expectations Jhabvala, Ruth, Heat and Dust Winch, Tara June, Swallow the Air Gaita, Raymond, Romulus My Father Drama or Film or Shakespeare Miller, Arthur, The Crucible Harrison, Jane, Rainbow’s End Luhrmann, Baz, Strictly Ballroom De Heer, Rolf, Ten Canoes Shakespeare, William, AsYou Like It Poetry Skrzynecki, Peter, Immigrant Chronicle - ‘Felix Skrzynecki’, St Patrick’s College’, ‘Ancestors’, ’10 Mary St’, ‘Migrant Hostel’, ‘Postcard’, ‘In the Folk Museum’ Dickinson, Emily, Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson –
