Hannah wins Anzac Day tour

Anzac Day will be particularly special for Hannah Place this year — the Bunbury student will spend it visiting sites in Malaysia where Australian service men and women were interned during World War II.

The proud recipient of a place on the Premier’s Anzac Student Tour, the 14-year-old competed against 400 entrants from around WA to secure one of 10 places.

Entrants were required to write an essay which finalists then had to deliver in the form of a speech.

A Bunbury Senior High School student, she is the first from her school to win a place on the tour, writing her essay on Changi Prisoner of War Camp.

TheYear 10 student said she was excited to see history come to life after long hours researching and writing.

‘‘It’s going to be really exciting to actually see the warmemorials, prisoner-of-war camps,’’ she said.

‘‘The prisoner-of-war experience I didn’t really know much about before I started.

‘‘It has really opened my eyes to Australians at war and the Japanese in war and just how brutal the POW experience is.’’

Planning on studying history next year, she hopes to eventually purse a career in journalism.

‘‘I’ve always been very interested in society and environment at school, so I’ll definitely do history in upper school — I really want to get into journalism,’’ she said.

‘‘I think travelling and documenting what we do will be really good for seeing if I’d like to be a journalist.’’