Student Records

The files on the floor were never collected. When Macquarie Boys' Technology High School closed at the end of 2009, whoever was last to leave did not take everything with them. Student records, the paper trail of academic lives, were left behind in a classroom block on the corner of Kissing Point Road and James Ruse Drive, Rydalmere. By 2015, when this photograph was made, they had been there for six years. The school had a long institutional history before it arrived at that site. It traced its origins to post-primary boys' classes operating on Macquarie Street, Parramatta, from 1920, moving through several name changes before being renamed Macquarie Boys' High School in 1955. The Rydalmere campus itself was purpose-built and occupied at the end of 1957, a product of the postwar expansion of government schooling across western Sydney. In 1989 the word "Technology" was added to the name, reflecting a shift in curriculum emphasis. The closure was announced by NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca on 23 August 2007. Enrolments had fallen to 220 students, with only six Year 7 enrolments projected for 2008. Years 7 to 10 were discontinued at the beginning of 2008, and the remaining Year 11 and 12 students completed their HSC before the school shut permanently at the end of 2009. The campus sat vacant for nearly a decade. A proposed replacement college never eventuated. Three separate fires damaged buildings across 2016, 2017, and 2018. All structures were demolished by November 2018. This photograph records what was left before the demolition. The records on the floor are not metaphor. They are paper, sitting where they were dropped or abandoned, holding the details of students who had long since moved on. The building that housed them no longer exists.