Entries from a Dry Year — Reading Comprehension — Answers
Answer sheet with model answers and success criteria for the Year 10 reading comprehension comprehension exercise.
Year 10 · English · Reading Comprehension
Entries from a Dry Year — Reading Comprehension — Answers
Entries from a Dry Year
Read all five diary entries. Pay attention to the details the narrator returns to, and to what the members of the family do not say to one another.
14 February
Forty-one degrees by ten o'clock. The dam is down to about a third, and you can see the old fence line Grandad put in before they raised the wall, running down into the mud like a row of broken teeth. At dinner Dad did the thing where he moves his lips a little, counting. Ewes, hay bales, dollars. Mum talked about the school bus timetable as if nothing was happening. Jack asked if we could get a pool. Nobody laughed, which was worse than if someone had told him off.
3 March
The stock agent came today in a ute cleaner than anything on this place. He and Dad leaned on the yard rail for an hour. I wasn't supposed to be listening, so I was. 'Just the old girls,' Dad kept saying. 'Just the old girls for now.' The agent nodded the way people do when they have already written the number down. Afterwards Dad walked out to the north paddock and I rode out after him and we didn't say anything; we just watched the ewes standing in the shade of the one tree out there, not even bothering to look for grass. On the way back Jack met us at the gate and asked if it was true that ants build their nests up high before rain. Mum says her grandmother swore by it. Jack has been checking the ants every afternoon. I haven't told him that the ants on the track have been building up for three weeks.
27 March
In town the girls are talking about the formal: dresses, who is going with whom, whether the hall will have air conditioning. Priya asked if I was coming and I said probably, and she looked at me like she already knew what probably means. Mrs Halloran handed back our personal essays. Mine was about swimming carnivals. She wrote 'beautifully controlled, but what are you not telling me?' in green pen at the bottom. I don't know how she can tell. I keep the paddocks out of my writing the way Mum keeps them out of her phone calls to Aunty Jen: bright voice, everything's fine, how are the kids.
19 April
The ute has had its bonnet up for four days. Dad goes to the shed after breakfast and comes back at dark and nothing on the ute is any different. Tonight Mum handed me the big torch and said, 'Just go and sit with him.' So I went. He was standing at the bench not fixing anything. He didn't look up. After a while he said, 'Hold it steady,' and I held the beam on a part of the engine he wasn't working on, and we stayed like that until the moths came. It was the longest conversation we've had in a month. On the way back to the house I could hear the sheep in the yards, the ones that are left, moving about in the dark, and the wind in the dead grass, which doesn't rustle any more. It ticks.
8 May
Clouds in the west this afternoon, proper ones, bruised underneath. Jack climbed the tank stand to watch them come and Mum didn't tell him to get down. Nobody said the word. Dad did the washing-up, which he never does, and kept turning the tap on and off, listening to it. At about seven the first drops hit the iron roof so far apart you could count them. Then you couldn't. Twelve millimetres in the gauge by nine o'clock. Not a drought-breaker, the radio will say tomorrow, and the radio will be right. But Dad went out and stood in it with his hat off and his face turned up, and Jack ran around the yard yelling about the ants, and Mum stood at the kitchen window with her hand over her mouth. I have just been down to the dam with the torch. It is still a third full. But tonight the third looked bigger.
Part A — Right there in the text
Find each answer in the diary.
Answer: A row of broken teeth.
- A'Not this year.'
- B'Just the old girls.'
- C'Name your price.'
- D'Come back in March.'
Answer: 'Just the old girls.'
The entry for 3 March says: ''Just the old girls,' Dad kept saying.'
Answer: The ants, because Mum's grandmother believed ants build their nests up high before rain.
Answer: 'Beautifully controlled, but what are you not telling me?'
- Aone day
- Bfour days
- Ca week
- Da month
Answer: four days
The entry begins: 'The ute has had its bonnet up for four days.'
Answer: Twelve millimetres.
Part B — Reading between the lines
Use evidence from the diary to explain your answers.
Answer: Laughter or a telling-off would be a normal family reaction. The silence shows the family is too worried to respond at all, which the narrator finds more frightening than anger.
Answer: The agent is not really negotiating; he has already decided what the sheep are worth and expects Dad to accept it. Dad's repetition of 'for now' is hope the agent does not share.
Answer: Because the ants have not brought rain, so the saying has failed. Telling Jack would take away the one hopeful thing he has, and the narrator is protecting him in the same way the adults protect the children.
Answer: They care for each other but cannot talk about what is happening. Holding the torch is the only way she can offer support, and 'Hold it steady' is the only way he can accept it. The narrator's calling it 'the longest conversation we've had in a month' shows how much is communicated without words.
Part C — Language in context
- Athin and white
- Bdark purple-grey and heavy with rain
- Clit by the sunset
- Dbreaking apart
Answer: dark purple-grey and heavy with rain
A bruise is dark purple or grey; the image suggests heavy, dark-bottomed rain clouds, and also hints at the pain the family has been through.
Answer: On the surface it praises the essay's careful writing. Underneath, it points to the narrator's emotional control: she is holding back what she really feels, just as she keeps the paddocks out of her writing.
Answer: Rustling suggests living, soft grass; ticking suggests something dry, brittle and mechanical, like a clock. It conveys how dead the landscape has become and a sense of time running out.
Part D — Analytical response
Model answer: The diary form gives the reader access to everything the narrator will not say to her family, and the gap between the two is where the text's meaning lies. Her voice is dry and observant, recording facts such as 'Forty-one degrees by ten o'clock' and 'Twelve millimetres in the gauge' while avoiding the word that nobody in the house will use. This control mirrors her mother's 'bright voice' on the phone and her father's silent counting, and Mrs Halloran's comment, 'what are you not telling me?', names the technique the whole family shares. The recurring motifs carry the emotion the dialogue withholds. The dam, measured only as 'a third', is the family's fortune made visible, and the 'broken teeth' of the exposed fence turn it into something wounded. The ants are a hope the narrator protects for Jack even though she knows it has failed, revealing that she has joined the adults in shielding others. The torch in the shed is the clearest image of the family's way of loving: she cannot fix anything, but she can hold the light steady. The final entry re-reads all of this. Dad turning the tap 'on and off, listening to it', then standing bare-headed in the rain, shows a man allowing himself feeling for the first time, and the narrator's closing sentence does not change the facts but changes her relationship to them. The dam is 'still a third full', yet 'the third looked bigger', so the diary ends not with rescue but with the return of hope, which the form has shown us is the thing the family had most carefully kept hidden.
Success criteria:
- Presents a clear thesis about how the diary form conveys the unsaid
- Analyses the narrator's voice and tone with evidence
- Discusses at least two motifs and what each comes to represent
- Explains how the final entry reshapes earlier material
- Integrates at least four well-chosen quotations fluently
- Uses precise analytical vocabulary (motif, subtext, juxtaposition, understatement)
- Structured with an introduction, developed paragraphs and a conclusion
Marking tips
- Give credit for correct method even when the final answer slips — the working shows where the thinking went right.
- For open-ended tasks, use the success criteria as a checklist rather than looking for one "right" answer.
- Celebrate what went well first, then pick one thing to work on next.
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