Laboratory Tap

The tap is still there. That is the first thing. A chrome gooseneck tap, fixed above the basin, still reflecting the light. Below it a stainless steel sink sits in a wooden counter strewn with crumpled papers and shattered glass, the plumbing exposed beneath. Nothing has been removed. Nothing has been cleaned. The fitting simply remained when everything else stopped. Macquarie Boys Technology High School occupied a purpose-built campus at the corner of Kissing Point Road and James Ruse Drive in Rydalmere, roughly 10 hectares of post-war government school construction typical of the NSW Government Architect's Branch in the late 1950s. Brick classroom blocks, covered walkways, an assembly hall. The school opened at that site at the end of 1957, having relocated from an earlier Macquarie Street address in Parramatta where it had operated under various names since 1920. In 1989, the word "Technology" was added to the school name, reflecting a shift in curriculum. By 2007, enrolments had fallen to 220 students. In August that year, NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca announced the school would close. The final students completed their HSC and the campus shut permanently at the end of 2009. A replacement institution, Lachlan Macquarie College, was proposed for the site with $3 million in government funding allocated; by 2015, the University of Western Sydney had confirmed it would not take up the lease. The campus sat vacant. Three fires followed across 2016, 2017, and 2018. The main hall was gutted in July 2016. A second fire destroyed another building in May 2017. By late 2018, the NSW Department of Education approved demolition, and all structures on the site were cleared by November of that year. This photograph was made in 2015, when the buildings were still standing. The tap and the sink were already years into their silence. The tiles behind them were already cracked, the grout lines darkened.