The Daily Telegraph picked up the Lost Collective Macquarie Boys Technology High gallery for a feature on the closed Parramatta school.
This school is well past saving. A number of people called for it to be restored when the gallery went live, which I understand: nostalgia for the place where you went to school is real. The photographs make the case more honestly than I could. The building is too far gone, and the land is more usefully redeployed than the structures preserved.
In 2016 the school hall suffered an arson attack and was destroyed. What I keep coming back to is the question of why publicly owned land like this is allowed to sit untouched for years, deteriorating quietly while the asbestos liabilities and clean-up costs go in only one direction.
For heritage-listed or historically significant buildings, the long pause makes some sense. The site has to be assessed, conserved, negotiated. Macquarie Boys Technology High does not have a heritage listing. I would not be surprised if the building continues to decline through the next decade.
A large group of former students saw the photographs when the gallery first went up on the Lost Collective Facebook page. The comments thread carried that particular weight: people seeing the building where they spent four or five years of their childhood, in this state.
"Amid overgrown weeds and deserted hallways, the trashed and empty classrooms of Macquarie Technology High School sit silently gathering dust in the darkness. Since dwindling enrolments forced the state government to close the Western Sydney school in 2008, the building and its grounds on James Ruse Drive have been abandoned to vandals and vagrants. In 2007, the site was speculated to be worth more than $10 million. Today, in crumbling labs where students once learned about science and maths, broken glass litters the floor and rusted lab equipment lies next to piles of discarded clipboards."
Read the full Daily Telegraph piece at dailytelegraph.com.au.
