Classroom

Five years after the last students left, the classrooms at Macquarie Boys Technology High School in Rydalmere looked much as they always had. Desks and chairs sat in rows. Dust had settled over every surface. Sunlight still reached the room through the windows, though the glass had not been cleaned since the school closed at the end of 2009. Nothing had been cleared out. Nothing had been repurposed. The building simply waited. The school traced its origins to post-primary boys' classes operating in Parramatta from 1920. It became Macquarie Boys' High School in 1955, then relocated to a purpose-built campus at Rydalmere at the end of 1957. The word "Technology" was added to the name in 1989 to reflect a curriculum shift. By 2007, enrolments had fallen to 220 students, with projections pointing lower still. NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca announced the closure on 23 August 2007. The last Year 11 and 12 students completed their HSC, and the school closed permanently at the end of 2009. What the 2015 photograph records is the nine-year vacancy that followed, still only at its midpoint. No replacement college eventuated on the site. No buyer came forward. The NSW Government maintained the buildings and kept them secure, but no decision on their future was made. Three separate fires would eventually tear through the campus before demolition was approved in 2018 and all structures were cleared by November of that year. This classroom, captured before the fires took hold, is one of the few records of the campus in a state between functioning school and ruin. The furniture still in place. The room still recognisable for what it was.