Old Trinitarian’s Union supports the Gary Catalano Writing Competition.

The Old Trinitarian’s Union has continued their support of the Gary Catalano Writing Competition.  

The competition is held in honour of Gary Catalano, an Old Boy of Trinity Grammar School and remembered as an influential member of the Australian literary and artistic community.  

Entering into the competition is voluntary for Trinity students (with the exception of the Year 7 Honours students), so the commitment, emotion and passion is on full display. Students can enter two categories – Poetry and/or Prose – with Junior and Senior submissions judged separately.  

The 2025 competition received almost 60 entries and the OTU was proud to provide vouchers for the winners of each category. It’s just one way the OTU continues to support the passions and growth of current students. 

Want to read something from the winners? Their winning entries are included below for you!  

'Arms Straight-Toes Pointed' by Paul Karlos (7TA)

Silent noise.

At least that's what it feels like.

Sound has a different rhythm up here,

voices collide and fuse, their melodies muted.

The leaderboard flickers to life.

Its lights slowly carve out my name,

Vowels delicately rounded, consonants climbing high.

I lean forward ever so slightly.

Below the water appears concrete, an impenetrable tundra.

Nerves and the weight of competition collect,

tuning with each other, commingling and colluding.

My simmering mind needs to be cool,

I am a burning patient in need of healing.

An invisible thread pulls me forward

one step filling one space

then two and rapidly multiplying.

I arc into the air

Twist

Pike

Arch

and stretch.

Here is the joy of being alive, my soul hums.

I am eye to eye with the water,

contesting to see who will conquer.  
 

Fingers slice through concrete,

arrowed body filters through.

Arms straight, toes pointed.

Submerged, I am tossed violently,

kicked and sputtered back to the foaming surface.

I lift my head and blink,

rearrange the multitude of colours blurred by water.

The audience freeze

Did I do it?

Did I capture lightning in a bottle?

Or perhaps a spark…..

'The Triangle' By Adonis Thanos (12YO)

Mist clung low to the grass the morning he arrived,

pooling in the hollows between the paving stones.

The surrounds loomed like a forest of sandstone with windows glinting like dew wet leaves

Shadows stretching skyward reaching for the heavens of knowledge

Voices and resonances of past and future history ready to be seized.

His tie was white-striped, defined against his blazer,

The stiffness still wrestling with his collar.

It felt too bright, like a marker of newness, of not-yet-knowing.

Head kept low as he followed the winding paths,

The corridors dense with noise, the floors etched with mud,

The walls layered with old paper and the air scented of instant coffee.

In those early days, he moved like a creature newly stepped into the undergrowth:

quiet, cautious, always listening.

The older students stood like trees.

Rooted and tall, their ties deeper in colour, their voices carrying further.

He, by contrast, was all rustling steps and half-spoken thoughts.

Seasons folded into one another. Leaves turned, fell, returned.

He found the sunlit clearings with benches beneath the climbing ivy

The far window in the library where the light always landed at three-forty.

His voice grew less brittle. His step, more sure.

The emblem above the old stone arch; a triangle carved deep into the crosspiece it began to mean

something.

Balance. Strength. Stillness in structure.

He saw it everywhere now, like patterns in the bark of the trees.

Three points: not just foundation, but form and purpose.

Patterns forming the understanding of the Pythagorean Tree.

By his final year, he no longer walked the edges.

He moved through it as if through familiar woods, taking the straighter paths, the steeper climbs.

His tie had changed, no longer white-striped, but bearing the colours of something earned, not

given.

The younger ones noticed and not because he tried to be seen, but because he carried the quiet

weight of someone who had grown here, season by season, tree ring by tree ring.

On his last morning, he paused beneath the arch once more.

The triangle above caught the rising light.

The trees swayed gently in the breeze behind him.

He edged forward through the forest,

However, no longer a visitor but as part of its shape.