Piano

The piano is still there, or it was in 2015. Keys coated in dust, lid down, the instrument sitting against a wall that is slowly losing its surface. Nobody has played it. Nobody has moved it. It is simply what was left behind when Macquarie Boys Technology High School closed at the end of 2009. The school had been at this Rydalmere address since the end of 1957, purpose-built on a 10-hectare campus at the corner of Kissing Point Road and James Ruse Drive. It was the latest iteration of an institution that stretched back much further: post-primary boys' classes on Macquarie Street, Parramatta, operating as Parramatta Intermediate High School from 1920, renamed Parramatta Junior High School in January 1944, then Macquarie Boys' High School in 1955. In 1989, the word "Technology" was added to the name, reflecting a shift in curriculum emphasis. By 2007, enrolments had fallen to 220 students, with 180 projected for the following year. NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca announced the closure on 23 August 2007. Years 7 to 10 were discontinued at the beginning of 2008. The remaining Year 11 and 12 students stayed on to complete their HSC, and the school closed permanently at the end of 2009. What followed was nine years of vacancy. The buildings were maintained and kept secure, according to a 2010 parliamentary answer, but no new use eventuated. A proposal for Lachlan Macquarie College to operate from the site, with $3 million in government funding allocated, did not proceed; Western Sydney University confirmed it would not take up the lease in 2015. Three separate fires struck the campus between 2016 and 2018. All structures were demolished by November 2018. This photograph was made in 2015, while the buildings still stood. The piano in the music room records a specific kind of institutional abandonment: not dramatic, not spectacular, just a heavy object nobody came back for.