Chemistry Set

On a laboratory bench at Macquarie Boys Technology High School, a chemistry set sits as it was left. Reagent bottles, glassware, the ordinary equipment of a science class. Nothing was packed away when the school closed at the end of 2009. It was simply abandoned, and the building settled into stillness around it. The school had occupied this corner of Rydalmere since its campus opened in 1958, the product of a postwar government push to expand public education across western Sydney. Originally established as a post-primary school on Macquarie Street, Parramatta, as far back as 1920, the institution moved through several name changes before landing at the Rydalmere site as Macquarie Boys' High School. In 1989 the word "Technology" was added to the name, reflecting a shift in curriculum emphasis toward trade and applied skills. By 2007 the school was struggling. Enrolments had fallen to around 220 students, with projections pointing lower still. NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca announced the closure on 23 August 2007. Parents pushed back, and a petition reached the NSW Legislative Assembly calling for the site to remain as a co-educational school with trade links, but the decision held. Year 7 to Year 10 enrolments were discontinued from the beginning of 2008, and the remaining Year 11 and 12 students completed their HSC before the school shut permanently at the end of 2009. What followed was nine years of vacancy. Vandals moved through the classrooms. Three separate fires struck the campus between 2016 and 2018, destroying the main hall and other structures. The laboratory bench, the glassware, the reagents, these things outlasted the institution that used them. Photographed in 2015, they record a moment inside that long pause between closure and demolition, before the bulldozers arrived in late 2018 and reduced the entire campus to cleared ground.