History’s Mysteries is back for 2026!
Bringing history to the forefront, the History's Mysteries Young Writers Competition challenges students to imagine the history behind a selection of significant museum artefacts and tell it in a short story.
Bunbury Museum and Heritage Centre will be touring a small collection of museum objects and ephemera to local schools. The objects will be on display at the Museum during the April and July school holidays and at schools during Term 2.
2026 theme: The Catalpa Escape of 1876
150 years ago, a group of Irish political prisoners – sent to Western Australia as convicts on life sentences for treason against the British Government – escaped from Fremantle prison following elaborate planning by sympathisers to their cause.
The escape involved international espionage, fundraising, a whaling barque named the Catalpa and a good dose of daring.
This year's History’s Mysteries Young Writers Competition asks young writers to step inside the life of a West Australian convict planning their great escape.
You can use the actual events of the Catalpa rescue as your inspiration - racing to freedom across the open sea - or you can imagine the part of those chasing them.
Why would a Bunbury-based writing competition be using the Catalpa rescue for inspiration when the rescue happened off Fremantle?
Bunbury has several connections with the Catalpa – the vessel waited here in Bunbury harbour until the escape plans were all in place, and one of the Irish prisoners had already escaped aboard a vessel named the Gazelle on 18 February 1869.
John Boyle O’Reilly was sent to Bunbury with his fellow Fenians as a convict aboard the Hougoumont - the last ship to bring convicts to WA - to Fremantle. O’Reilly worked on road gangs building roads we still drive on today. He was an educated man, a poet and a journalist. O’Reilly escaped, made his way to the United States and instigated the rescue of his fellow convicts.
His escape from the Belvedere area in Australind aboard the Gazelle is one of the great Bunbury stories. You can visit the locations important to O’Reilly’s story today.
We invite young writers from the Greater Bunbury area to imagine stories lost to time by crafting a short story featuring a chosen museum artefact. View the artefacts in the Information Pack below:
School registration to host tour artefacts closes: 19 March 2026
Competition opens: 11 April 2026
Exhibition touring schools: 20 April – 3 July 2026
Competition closes: 31 July 2026
Awards Night: Thursday 10 September 2026
There are three divisions, Years 5-6, 7-8 and 9-12 with prizes for first, second and third place in each division.
- Entries must be in short story form and be a maximum of 1000 words long. They may be written in any genre.
- Entrants must be aged 9 – 18 years in November 2026 and must live or go to school in the Greater Bunbury area.
- Stories may be written independently or at school.
- The story must mention one or more of the objects in the touring collection. These objects will be displayed at the Bunbury Museum and Heritage Centre during the April and July school holidays, and they will be touring local participating schools during Term 2.
- All entries must be original work written by the named author for the competition.
- Entries should be submitted using the form on our website on or before 31 July, 2026. If this is not possible, they may be submitted in person at the Bunbury Museum and Heritage Centre, where you can fill out a paper entry form.
- Submissions must be in PDF or Word Document format and may be a maximum of 10MB in size.
- Winners will be announced at an Awards Night on Thursday, 10 September 2026. Prizes will be presented at the event held at the Bunbury Museum and Heritage Centre, and the winning entries will be read aloud. Authors may choose whether they would like to read their work, or have it read by another person.
- The winning stories will be displayed in the Museum along with the objects.
- While the Bunbury Museum and Heritage Centre will retain the right to display the stories, publicise them online, and add them to the Museum’s collections, copyright for the work will remain with the author.