Sports Storage

A storage room inside the former Macquarie Boys Technology High School campus holds what was left behind when the school closed at the end of 2009. Worn sports balls and faded nets rest across the floor and shelving, coated in the dust of years of vacancy. Nothing has been collected or cleared. The room reads as a direct record of the moment the school stopped. The campus at the corner of Kissing Point Road and James Ruse Drive, North Parramatta, was purpose-built for the school, which relocated there at the end of 1957. The school had operated under several names across earlier decades, beginning as Parramatta Intermediate High School in 1920, renamed Parramatta Junior High School in 1944, and becoming Macquarie Boys' High School in 1955. The word "Technology" was added to the name in 1989, reflecting a shift in curriculum emphasis. At its closure in 2009, the campus covered approximately 10 hectares. The decision to close came in August 2007, when NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca announced that enrolments had fallen to 220 students, with a projected 180 for the following year. Years 7 to 10 were discontinued at the beginning of 2008, with remaining Year 11 and 12 students completing their HSC before the school closed permanently at the end of 2009. By 2015, when this photograph was made, the campus had been vacant for six years. A proposal to establish Lachlan Macquarie College on the site had not proceeded, and the University of Western Sydney confirmed that year it would not take up the lease. The buildings remained standing but deteriorating, subject to repeated vandalism and arson. Three fires struck the campus between 2016 and 2018. All structures were demolished by November 2018. The sports storage room photographed here no longer exists.