Bendigo Senior Secondary College Year 12 student Sol Musk's piece My Mother Wanda looks through the eyes of a wallaby at the side of the Djab Wurrung birthing trees beside Victoria's Western Highway.

The trees were surrounded by controversy in 2018 and 2019, as protesters stood against state government plans to remove them for a highway duplication project.

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The story was originally written for a creative writing assessment as part of Ms Musk's Year 12 literature studies.

It has since won the 2020 Hachette Australia Prize for Young Writers, in fiction.

Ms Musk said she was surprised even to receive a shortlisting - she had forgotten even submitting the piece.

She was stunned to hear her story had won the fiction category.

"I was so surprised and shocked. I was really happy though, I called my Mum and Dad," Ms Musk said.

Ms Musk said South African writer Ceridwen Dovey influenced her story. Ms Dovey's work - which Ms Musk was studying at the time - charts the stories of animals during times of human conflict.

Her task was to pick her own animal and a human conflict.

Ms Musk had followed the saga surrounding the Djab Wurrung birthing trees closely.

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When brainstorming the events stood out as a strong commentary on social justice that was happening "right now".

"I feel very passionately about Indigenous voice, and Indigenous rights and recognition. Anything to do with Indigneous rights, especially land rights," Ms Musk said.

"As much as I could, I tried to advocate for not cutting down the trees."

Researching, Ms Musk found that wallabies like to be solitary. Narrating the story through the eyes of one allowed her to play with the idea of solitude, coupled with place and country.

Ms Musk channeled the style of Aboriginal poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal, or Kath Walker, helping her enter her protagonist wallaby's head, setting the tone.

She let the wallaby speak in simple sentences, mapping out three stages of a life.

An excerpt of Ms Musk's work reads:

I'm six years old. Young for a wallaby. I was nearly one when I left my mother. It was springtime. With the growth of new grasses and the days growing longer, I placed one long foot after another and never returned. I thought of her a lot at first, especially when it became colder. I longed for the warmth and softness of her pouch. Instead, I returned to the trees and slept in the grasses. I told the story of Bwalla the Hunter to myself, though perhaps the trees were listening.

I've visited the trees many times since then. I gave birth to a joey - a boy - a few months after I left my mother. Lying still in the grasses, I watched as the tiny joey climbed his way up to my pouch, using only his front paws. I spent nine months telling my son of the wallaby that got away from Bwalla. I told him about Nona. Nona's mother and her mother and hers. I told the stories, he listened. I taught him the song of hope. I added something about our children's children and the glad tomorrow. We sang it together.

In the spring, my son left me. He placed one long foot after another and never returned.

Ms Musk said she created a mood of sadness throughout the story, to match its ending.

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She said a lot of responses to her piece had focused on that mood.

"I feel that way too but it kind of made me realise that the whole concept of moving these trees is a really emotional thing that shouldn't be tampered with," Ms Musk said.

"It's really important to remember how emotionally jarring it could be if that was to happen, for so many people and from so many different perspective."

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