Library Walkway

A narrow covered walkway connects sections of the library block at the former Macquarie Boys' Technology High School, photographed in 2015 during the long vacancy that followed the school's closure. Concrete walls carry layers of peeling paint. Light arrives in angular patches from one end of the passage; the far end sits in shadow. Nothing has been left here deliberately. The passage simply remains. The school occupied a purpose-built campus on the corner of Kissing Point Road and James Ruse Drive in Rydalmere, constructed in the late 1950s under the NSW Government Architect's Branch. It opened as Macquarie Boys' High School, drawing on a lineage that stretched back to post-primary boys' classes operating from Macquarie Street, Parramatta, from 1920. The Rydalmere campus was occupied at the end of 1957. In 1989, the word "Technology" was added to the school's name, reflecting a shift in curriculum emphasis. By 2007, enrolments had fallen to 220 students. NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca announced closure on 23 August 2007. The last students completed their HSC and the school shut permanently at the end of 2009. A proposed replacement college never proceeded. The site sat maintained but unused, caught in bureaucratic uncertainty while the buildings decayed around it. Three separate fires struck the campus during the vacancy years. The main hall was gutted on 23 July 2016. A second fire followed in May 2017. All remaining structures were demolished between late August and November 2018. This walkway no longer exists. The photograph made in 2015 is among the last records of the library block before the fires and demolition removed it entirely. The concrete, the peeling paint, the quality of light through an institutional passage: all of it is gone. What the frame holds now is the only version of it that remains.