Basketball Court Panorama

The outdoor basketball court at Macquarie Boys Technology High School sits on a 10-hectare campus in Rydalmere, New South Wales. By 2015, when this photograph was made, the asphalt had cracked, though the yellow centre-line arc still held, bisecting the frame almost evenly. The curved upper facade above carried 4 large graffiti tags across its window line, the most prominent a blue Bb spanning the left bay. 2 small rectangular tables sat abandoned on the right side of the court. The school traced its origins to post-primary boys' classes operating in Parramatta from 1920. The institution moved through several names across three decades before relocating to the purpose-built Rydalmere campus at the end of 1957. In 1989, the word "Technology" was added to the school's name to reflect a shift in curriculum emphasis. The campus, designed within the tenure of NSW Government Architect Cobden Parkes, followed the standard post-war institutional typology: brick and concrete classroom blocks, covered walkways, an assembly hall, and playing facilities across the site. By 2007, enrolments had fallen to 220 students, with projections of 180 for the following year. NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca announced the school's closure on 23 August 2007. The remaining Year 11 and 12 students completed their HSC, and the school closed permanently at the end of 2009. A proposed replacement college never proceeded, and the site sat vacant under government ownership for nine years. Three fires damaged the campus during that period. The main hall was gutted in July 2016. A second fire destroyed another building in May 2017. All remaining structures were approved for demolition in late April 2018, and the site was cleared by November of that year. This photograph records the court as it was in 2015, three years into that vacancy and three years before the demolition crews arrived. The cracked asphalt and the tags are not decay for its own sake; they are the ordinary consequence of a place that was simply stopped.