Belvedere Tea Rooms heritage sign in Austin Street Cue
Stories Above the Street  •  Cue

Belvedere Tea Rooms

Afternoon tea, meals at all hours and ice cream in the Murchison — the Belvedere Tea Rooms offered Cue a place to eat, meet and linger during the 1930s.

A different kind of Austin Street business

Somewhere to sit, eat and catch up.

By the 1930s, Cue's commercial centre was no longer simply a collection of stores supplying miners and prospectors. The town had matured, and businesses such as the Belvedere Tea Rooms catered to the social as well as practical side of everyday life.

A surviving photograph records a modest Austin Street establishment advertising afternoon teas as a speciality, meals at all hours and Peters ice cream — a little slice of café culture in the middle of the Murchison.

At a glance
Business: Belvedere Tea Rooms
Location: Cue
Modern sign: Bowler's, Est. 1935
Historic photograph: c.1930s
Afternoon teas: A speciality
Meals: At all hours
Ice cream: Peters
Earlier premises: Associated with J. S. Hince, Baker
Cue  •  c.1930s

The Tea Rooms survive in one remarkable streetscape photograph.

The State Library of Western Australia preserves this image of the Belvedere Tea Rooms alongside the former J. S. Hince bakery premises. Though modest in scale, the shopfront still tells us an extraordinary amount about the business.

Belvedere Tea Rooms and J S Hince Baker in Cue during the 1930s
Belvedere Tea Rooms and the former J. S. Hince bakery premises, Cue, c.1930s.
Look closely

The signs are almost a menu.

The Belvedere sign advertises afternoon teas as a speciality, suggesting that customers were encouraged to stop for more than a quick purchase.

Another message offers meals at all hours, making the business part tea room, part café and part dependable eating place for travellers and townspeople.

A Peters ice cream sign in the window adds another recognisable treat to the menu — particularly appealing in the heat of a Murchison summer.

More than somewhere to eat

Tea rooms were social spaces.

For much of the early twentieth century, tea rooms occupied a place somewhere between a café, restaurant and community meeting place.

They provided somewhere respectable and comfortable to sit down, have a meal or light refreshment, meet friends, conduct an informal conversation or simply take a break from the street outside.

In an isolated town like Cue, that social role mattered. The Belvedere was part of the network of places that helped turn a mining centre into a settled community.

At the Belvedere

Tea, a meal — or something cold.

The photograph does not preserve a complete menu, but the surviving signs give us three clear parts of the Belvedere experience.

AFTERNOON TEA

A speciality

The shop proudly promoted afternoon tea as a speciality — an invitation to stop rather than simply pass through.

MEALS

At all hours

The Belvedere also advertised meals at all hours, suggesting a practical eating place capable of serving customers beyond the traditional tea break.

ICE CREAM

Peters in the window

A Peters ice cream advertisement is visible in the historic photograph — a small but wonderfully familiar detail from everyday life in 1930s Cue.

The building had another life

Before tea and ice cream, there was bread.

Above the Belvedere Tea Rooms in the surviving photograph, another name remains clearly visible: J. S. Hince — Baker.

The State Library's catalogue notes that J. S. Hince may have occupied the premises before the Tea Rooms.

The photograph therefore appears to preserve a transition in Austin Street: an older business name still painted above a premises that had taken on a new life as the Belvedere Tea Rooms.

Layers of a streetscape

Old signs did not disappear overnight.

Goldfields buildings frequently changed hands and changed purpose. A shop might become a café, a store become an office, or a business move while its old painted name remained on the façade for years.

The Belvedere photograph captures exactly that sort of layering. Rather than seeing the Hince and Belvedere names as conflicting evidence, together they help reveal the changing commercial life of the same part of Cue.

Two stories, one streetscape

J. S. Hince → Belvedere Tea Rooms

They should be treated as separate businesses, but their stories are linked by the premises preserved in the same historic photograph.

Cue in the 1930s

The gold rush had changed. The town remained.

The Belvedere belongs to a later chapter of Cue's history than many of the businesses remembered elsewhere above Austin Street.

The frantic pioneering years of the 1890s had passed, but Cue remained a regional centre serving mining, pastoral and travelling communities.

A tea room offering meals, afternoon refreshments and ice cream reflects a town that had developed rhythms of everyday life far beyond the urgency of the first gold rush.

A familiar name in the window

Even the ice cream sign tells a story.

The Peters advertisement visible in the Belvedere window is one of those small details that collapses the distance between past and present.

People in 1930s Cue were doing something completely recognisable today — stopping somewhere in town for a meal, an afternoon tea or an ice cream.

1930s Cue

Tea, meals and ice cream.

Not every piece of history needs to involve a gold mine or a famous person. Sometimes an old café window tells us just as much about how people actually lived.

The story of the premises

From baker to tea rooms.

EARLIER

J. S. Hince

The premises are associated with J. S. Hince, baker, whose name remained prominently painted above the shopfront.

1935

Belvedere Tea Rooms

The modern heritage sign remembers the Belvedere as Bowler's — Est. 1935.

c.1930s

Caught on camera

The Tea Rooms are photographed advertising afternoon teas, meals at all hours and Peters ice cream.

Modern Belvedere Tea Rooms heritage sign above Austin Street
Stories Above the Street

The Belvedere name looks over Austin Street again.

The restored heritage sign remembers the Belvedere Tea Rooms and carries the wording Bowler's — Est. 1935.

Its neighbour, the restored J. S. Hince — Baker sign, preserves the earlier story associated with the same historic shopfront.

Together, the signs show something the historic photograph captured by accident: buildings change hands, businesses change names, but pieces of each generation can remain visible in the streetscape.

Historical note

The State Library of Western Australia catalogues the surviving photograph as “Belvedere Tea Rooms and J.S. Hince, Baker, Cue” and dates it broadly to the 1930s. Its catalogue description records the Tea Rooms advertising afternoon teas as a speciality, meals at all hours and Peters ice cream, and notes that J. S. Hince may have occupied the premises before the Tea Rooms. The restored heritage sign carries the wording “Bowler's — Est. 1935”; until contemporary records independently identifying the Bowler proprietor and exact opening date are located, those details are presented here as part of the heritage sign rather than expanded beyond the available evidence.

Stories Above the Street

History isn't only found in mines and monuments.

Sometimes it survives in the memory of an afternoon tea, a meal shared in town or an ice cream bought on a hot Murchison day. The Belvedere Tea Rooms remind us that Cue's history was also made in ordinary places — where people met, ate, talked and lived their everyday lives.