Immigrants at Central Station, 1951

The first poem in Peter Skrzynecki’s Immigrant Chronicle is set in Sydney’s main railway station. As it is dated “1951” it is some years after the arrival of the Skrzyneckis here in Australia and also provides us with the context of the poem. The first lines of the poem, “It was sad to hear the train’s whistle this morning...” induces sadness whereas it usually induces joy. This tell us that the Skrzyneckis were sad almost certainly due to the fact that they were about to travel into the unknown. The imagery in the first stanza is a depressing one, “All night it had rained.” The poems tone here is mournful. As the poem goes on it says, “But we ate it all...” This is used metaphorically for positiveness. No matter how gloomy, they enjoy it. In the first line of the second stanza it says “Time waited anxiously with us...” The technique of personification is used to emphasise that the immigrants waited although they did not exactly know what they waited for. “And spaced hemmed us...” depicts the crowded station on that fateful night. Skrzynecki and his family are crowded together, “Like cattle bought for slaughter.” This is a very strong simile in which Skrzynecki is illustrating the appalling and crowded conditions in which the immigrants are experiencing. In the second stanza, it says that the immigrants stood with their families, “Watching pigeons that watched them.” This portrays an image that the immigrants are fascinated by the native fauna; although it may also be used as a metaphor for the people at the station who just stare at the immigrants as they await their fates. The third stanza mainly depicts fear and uncertainty. “It was sad to hear...” is how the second stanza begins, a repetition of the opening line of the poem. “The trains whistle so suddenly...” uses another technique in assonance which also represents the sound that a train makes before it begins to depart. The journey is seen to be a forced exercise, controlled by various man made machines: the whistle is, “like a word of command”; the signal, dropping into place at the end of the platform is “like a guillotine”, an instrument of execution. Both of these represent the denial of freedom which the immigrants are experiencing, even “the space of eyesight”, as the signal blocks the view down the track. “While time ran ahead along glistening tracks of steel.” is the final line of the poem. The personification “while time ran ahead” tells us that time is leaving them behind and that what now lies before them is unknown.