Skip to main content

Heywire: Leaving home, leaving yourself

Posted 
Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.
Teenage girl smiles while receiving award
Heywire: Leaving home, leaving yourself

SUBJECTS:  English

YEARS:  9–10


Leaving the only home you've ever known can be tough.

For Janet Brown, it led to a serious case of depression. Although she was able to work through this, for a time Janet felt that she had lost everything, including herself. In her Heywire story Janet constructs a powerful image of her condition.

To talk with someone about anxiety or depression visit www.headspace.org.au or www.beyondblue.org.au, or call the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.

Could you write or record a similar story about yourself and/or your community?

The ABC's Heywire competition calls for stories from 16-22 year olds in regional Australia. Enter to get your story featured on the ABC and score an all-expenses-paid trip to the Heywire Regional Youth Summit in Canberra. More: https://www.abc.net.au/heywire/


Things to think about

  1. 1.What does your home mean to you? Take a moment to think about your bedroom, or even the whole of the place where you live. How would it feel to have to leave it? Imagine you were only able to take a few boxes of belongings with you. What would you take? What would you leave? Write down your response.
  2. 2.How does the first sentence of Janet's story set the scene for what is to follow? How does Janet create a negative image of their first rental house? What literary device does Janet use to construct her depiction of depression? Note down the various details of the image she creates here. What did losing the farm mean to Janet?
  3. 3.Listen carefully as Janet describes her journey out of depression. What phrases indicate that life was improving? Apart from her words, does Janet use any other devices in the audio clip to indicate life is getting better? What makes the home her family bought something special?
  4. 4.Think of Janet's story as a play in three acts. Where would each act begin and end? What words does Janet use to indicate that she is moving into a new stage in her story? Listen out for transition words, which indicate a shift in time.



Date of broadcast: 2010


Copyright

Metadata © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia Ltd 2012 (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Posted