1. Journey: the North Coast
P Hegarty 2012
This poem describes a train journey possibly from the city to
a country location. The poem opens with the persona
awakening having spent the night on the train. The persona
cannot wait to view the familiar landscape of the bush and
sea. This familiar natural world is rejuvenating and
spiritually healing.
It is a journey on which they remember twelve unhappy
months in the city possible separated from friends and
loved ones. This physical journey also prompts older
happier memories of home.
Towards the end of the train journey there is a gratifying
realisation that a painful chapter of their life has come to an
end and that now they can now take stock again and
wonder about, and imagine other more meaningful
directions to take in their life ahead.
2. Next thing, I wake up in a swaying bunk. The persona’s enthusiasm is contagious as we
as though on board a clipper
lying in the sea, join him mid journey. The opening colloquial
and it’s the train, that booms and cracks, phrase ‘The next thing’ reminds us of an child
it tears the wind apart.
Now the man’s gone recounting a series of exciting events. He
who had the bunk below me. I swing out, imagines himself on a sailing ship on the high
cover his bed and rattle up the sash—
there’s sunlight rotating
seas. The aural imagery created in the
off the drab carpet. And the water sways onomatopoeia of the words ‘booms’ and
solidly in its silver basin, so cold ‘cracks’ and the verb ‘tears’ creates a sense of
it joins together through my hand.
powerful energy and capture the excitement
and celebration of this emotional journey
• The journey is recounted in first person allowing the reader to share the
diverse range of imagery and the sensations and mood stimulated by this
physical journey through familiar landscape.
• The tactile image swaying recreates the movement of the train as the
persona feels propelled forward to their destination.
3. • The savage primal power of the engine that ‘tears the wind apart’ matches
his vitality and vigour. He can’t wait to let in the abundant light now that
they have symbolically left the darkness of the night and twelve unhappy
months spent in the city behind.
• The poem is written in present tense and this creates a dramatic
immediacy of a physical and emotional journey unfolding as the train
travels onwards…
• The adverbs ‘next’, ‘now’, create suspense and a sequential order and
punctuate the different stages of this journey.
• The active verbs ‘I swing out’ ‘…rattle up the sash’ show how he eagerly
embraces the day in joyful anticipation of returning home
• Poem dominated by airiness and light in contrast to the ‘drab’ interior of
the train
4. There is a comforting freshness and purity in
I see from where I’m bent the domesticity of the metaphor describing
One of those bright crockery days the morning as ‘One of those bright
that belong to so much I remember.
crockery days’. The sensation evoking fond
The train’s shadow, like a bird’s,
flees on the blue and silver paddocks, memories from the past, as the speaker
over fences that look split from stone, returns imaginatively to their formative
and banks of fern, years on the North Coast. The simile
a red clay bank, full of roots, comparing the train to a bird emphasises its
over a dark creek, with logs and leaves suspended, speed as it rushes the persona to his
destination. The bird also symbolises
freedom and that of the spirit soaring in
celebration of a new day, a return to a
happier time and a happier place
• The poem is dominated by images of light, purity, colour emphasising this journey of emotional and
spiritual regeneration
• The verb ‘flees’ suggest escape as they appear to swoop over the colourful landscape with fences,
bank and creeks providing no barrier on this journey
• The persona want to visually absorb as much as possible of the familiar reassuring ancient
landscape of ‘clay’ and ‘stone’
6. and blackened tree trunks.
Down these slopes move, as a nude descends a staircase,
slender white gum trees,
and now the country bursts open on the sea—
across a calico beach, unfurling;
strewn with flakes of light
that make the whole compartment whirl.
• The persona notes the detail of familiar iconic Australian images of ‘blackened tree
trunks’ and the evocative description of the gums in the allusion to the painting “Nudes
Descending a Staircase”. This allusion to the cubist painting by Duchamp suggests a
sense cylindrical movement of shapes merging in colour and light. The movement of
the train creates the illusion of the trees marching towards them in cinematic stop
motion fashion.
• The sudden switching from image to image emphasises the speed of the train and the
rapidly changing landscape
• The powerful exhilaration created by the verb “bursts” and the familiar domestic image
created in the metaphor comparing the ‘unfurling’ beach to ‘calico’ reinforce the mood
of unrestrained /elation/celebration
• The metaphor; ‘Strewn with flakes of light’ continues this festive mood as does the verb
‘whirl’ which also suggests a dance of unhindered delight. The persona sees their mood
matched and mirrored in the beauty of nature…vitality
7. Shuttering shadows. I rise into the mirror
rested. I’ll leave my hair
ruffled a bit that way—fold the pyjamas,
stow the book and wash bag. Everything done,
press down the latches into the case,
that for twelve months I’ve watched standing out
of a morning, above the wardrobe
in a furnished room.
(Gray 1998,
• “Stuttering shadows” as the train begins to slow down
• Hair “ruffled” symbolic of his new found sense freedom leaving a life of
conformity behind
• “Press down the latches” suggests certainty, finality, an escape from ‘twelve
months…in a furnished room’.
• He has watched these latches ‘standing out ‘ in longing anticipation of this day
• The persona realises they have closed one chapter in their life and now anticipate
and ponder on the next
• The last two lines are short and terse indicative of his twelve month experience
in the city
• He describes himself as ‘rested’…sated and reassured by the sensory
journey…there is a sense of contentment… a yearning satisfied now that he is
home and imagines a more optimistic future ahead.
