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About Time is the national newspaper for Australian prisons and detention facilities

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Creative

Would You Travel Back in Time?

A finalist from our 'Time Travel' writing competition!

By

Tanya

Tanya writes from a prison in VIC.

A green charcoal illustration of a love heart.
Ethan Cassidy

If you could travel in time, would you change anything? Or would you simply see for yourself how life has evolved? How far in time would you travel back or forward too?

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Would you travel back when Earth was a hot ball of gas? Watch it expand. When the sun shone down on earth and clouds gathered and water fell to the ground, cells multiplied and grew. Land moved on tectonic plates, oceans formed, animals grew, earthquakes happened and volcanoes erupted.

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Would you travel back to the exact year, month, week, day, hour, minute, second when you decided to commit your crime?

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Would you travel to 2036? You are 10 years older from now. Will you have finished your sentence? Will you still be in custody?

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Would you travel to 2046? You are 20 years older.

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What will Earth look like then? Will robots take over? Will cancer be cured? Will there be another disease that has taken over?

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Will we finally know the answer to life?

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What do you think you will look like? How will you feel? What do you hope to be doing? Who do you want in your life? Who do you hope will still be in your life?

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What do you think you would have achieved? How do you think your health will be?

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Or do you think you will be doing the same thing you did back in that year, month, week, day, hour, minute, second!

This
piece
was originally printed in the
October 2026
edition of About Time.
By About Time

Clearly you only have to nominate ‘time travel’ as the subject of a writing competition to get people thinking.

ISSUE NO. 27
•
2 MIN READ
By Marley

Time, for me, was at first just “the clock on the wall” at high school. When is lunch? When will this test finish? And when is home time?

ISSUE NO. 27
•
1 MIN READ
By Jaivien

Have you ever found yourself at the bottom of a well?

ISSUE NO. 27
•
2 MIN READ
By Rain

The decay of an atom indicates that time itself has passed, it is the origin of our concept of time.

ISSUE NO. 27
•
3 MIN READ
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