Stories Above the Street • Cue

Crooks & Brooker

On Darlot Street, miners could order parts for a crushing battery and families could buy a stove. By 1909 this Cue ironmongery was the head depot for a business serving towns across the Murchison.

The Darlot Street store

A hardware shop for a goldfields town

When the Geraldton Express visited Cue in 1897, Crooks & Brooker had already doubled the size of its premises. Its store, offices and timber stock occupied a broad frontage on Darlot Street.

The firm had come west from South Australia. Its chief place of business on the Murchison was then at Day Dawn. Cue’s branch kept its own stocks of timber and ironware, and its manager knew which fittings the district’s mines needed.

At a glance

Business: Hardware and timber merchants
South Australian base: Port Adelaide
Cue premises: Darlot Street
Cue branch: Photographed by March 1897
Head depot: Cue by December 1909
Heritage sign: Austin Street, Cue
Date on the sign: Est 1909

The Adelaide connection

How two surnames reached a roof in Cue

The name on the Cue store came from a South Australian hardware business. Its ownership changed over the years, but customers on both sides of the continent continued to know it as Crooks & Brooker. Port Adelaide Historical Society.

1876

William Crooks and John Burton

The business began in April 1876 under the name Crooks, Burton & Co. Its early trade was in hardware and furnishings.

1878

William Brooker joins

When Burton retired, William Brooker joined Crooks. The partners traded as Crooks & Brooker and had a showroom in Port Adelaide.

1890

The name stays

William Crooks retired. William Brooker continued with the McDonald and Scales partners, whose connections extended from Adelaide to London.

Behind the counter

From an Adelaide hardware counter to Darlot Street

The 1897 reporter named H. W. Bell as the man in charge of the Cue store. Bell was South Australian and had learned the hardware trade with Harris, Scarfe & Co. in Adelaide.

He came west to manage the Cue branch for R. P. Young. The reporter gave Bell credit for knowing what local customers needed, particularly the mines that relied on him for engine fittings.

“a large frontage on Darlot-street”

The reporter described the enlarged store, its offices and the room needed to keep timber and ironware on hand. For a mining customer, being able to buy the right size of valve locally mattered.

Inside the store

What could you buy at Crooks & Brooker?

A surviving advertisement names the makers as well as the goods. Read alongside the newspaper’s account of the Cue shop, it gives a sense of what a customer might have asked for.

FOR THE MINE

Wire rope and explosives

The firm advertised Bullivant’s wire ropes and Nobel’s explosives and fuse. At Cue the reporter also saw valves, piping and fittings for engines.

FOR THE BATTERY

Parts for crushing ore

Stamper shoes and dies took the wear as heavy stampers crushed ore. The firm advertised Firth’s replacement parts and Goyne’s screens for the batteries.

FOR THE HOME

Metters ovens and stoves

Householders could order a Metters oven or stove from the same merchant that supplied the mines. Builders could buy timber and hardware through the firm as well.

The railway • 1902

A contract on the line north of Cue

Crooks & Brooker also tendered for building work. On 24 December 1902 the WA Government accepted the firm’s tender for part of the Cue–Nannine railway.

The work covered station buildings and cottages on the section from Cue to Tuckanarra. The wording in the contract fixes both the route and the kind of work involved.

“Station Buildings and Cottages”

The tender notice identifies the railway section. It leaves the individual buildings unnamed, so the contract alone cannot establish who built Cue’s surviving station.

Who owned the business?

Two partners in Adelaide, two in London

On 2 June 1898 the firm registered in Western Australia as ironmongers and merchants of hardware and timber at Cue and Day Dawn.

The register names William Brooker and William Arthur McDonald of Adelaide, together with James Edelsten McDonald and George McArthur Scales of London.

Their addresses explain how the Port Adelaide business and the Cue shop were connected. William Brooker himself was still a partner when the two Murchison stores were registered.

From the register

Cue and Day Dawn

Both towns appear in the same entry. The date records the registration of the partnership. The Cue shop had already appeared in print the previous year.

Darlot Street • 1897

Look at the roof of the Cue branch

The name stretches across the slope of the roof. Beneath it, a second line tells passers-by the firm’s trade in ironmongery and timber.

Darlot Street store with Crooks & Brooker painted on the roof, published March 1897

The Geraldton Express • 26 March 1897

Crooks and Brooker, Cue Branch

The newspaper printed this view on page 50 of its illustrated feature on Cue. The figures at the left give a sense of the building’s scale. See the photograph and the 1897 account on Trove.

December 1909

Cue becomes the head depot

Twelve years after the photograph appeared, the local newspaper described a change in the firm’s operations. Cue now had the head depot, with branches at Day Dawn, Meekatharra, Nannine and Sandstone.

The Murchison Times and Day Dawn Gazette called the firm the district’s largest supplier of mining, building and general hardware. That was the newspaper’s assessment in December 1909.

It also reported that Crooks & Brooker imported directly from English and American markets. A customer ordering machinery parts in Cue was drawing on those overseas suppliers.

The branch network

Four branches named in the 1909 Cue newspaper

DAY DAWN

The earlier head office

The 1897 account put the firm’s chief Murchison business here. The 1909 account listed Day Dawn as a branch.

MEEKATHARRA

Merchants and builders

The firm also took on local building work in Meekatharra, including St Oswald’s Anglican Church, dedicated in 1909.

NANNINE

On the firm’s advertisements

Crooks & Brooker named Nannine alongside Cue and Day Dawn in an advertisement for hardware, timber and mining supplies.

SANDSTONE

On the 1909 branch list

Sandstone appears alongside the other three branches in the Christmas-week report published in Cue.

Beyond the gold rush

The trading name outlasted the founders

William Brooker retired in 1899. The next generation of partners kept trading under the name already familiar to Murchison customers.

In 1932 the Adelaide Chronicle reported that the firm was winding up its South Australian operations to concentrate on Western Australia.

The name was still recorded in Cue in March 1941. That month the WA Government Gazette listed the firm at Cue, Meekatharra, Wiluna and Geraldton.

Austin Street • The trade sign

A shopping list above the verandah

Look closely at the second Crooks & Brooker sign. In a few lines it sets out the needs of a town where households, mines, builders and working animals all had to be supplied.

Cue trade sign listing hardware, mining supplies, ammunition and stockfeed

Words on the sign

“All mining requisites”

Alongside mining supplies, the lettering names household hardware, guns, rifles and cartridges. On the right are chaff, bran and oats.

The feed is an easily missed detail. Where horses did the hauling, keeping them fed was as much a part of the working day as finding tools or timber.

Reading the dates

What does “Est 1909” tell us?

Those words appear on the present Crooks & Brooker sign. The newspaper photograph places the firm on Darlot Street by March 1897.

December 1909 does give us a firm date for a different detail. By then a Cue newspaper described the town as the head depot for the Murchison branches.

The surviving accounts leave open the precise opening date of the Darlot Street shop and the date when the head depot moved from Day Dawn to Cue.

Crooks & Brooker through the years

From Port Adelaide to the Murchison

1876

The business begins

William Crooks and John Burton establish their South Australian business.

1878

The partnership changes

William Brooker joins Crooks and the firm adopts the name seen on the Cue roof.

1897

The Cue photograph

The Geraldton Express publishes the Darlot Street store and describes Day Dawn as the chief office.

1898

The WA registration

The partners register the hardware and timber business at Cue and Day Dawn.

1902

Railway buildings

The firm wins a contract for buildings and cottages on the Cue–Tuckanarra section.

1909

The head depot

The local paper records Cue as the depot serving four Murchison branches.

1941

Still listed at Cue

The WA Government Gazette lists Cue among the firm’s Western Australian locations.

Crooks & Brooker heritage sign displaying Est 1909

Stories Above the Street

The name above Austin Street today

The burgundy and cream sign bears the words “Crooks & Brooker Ltd” and “Ironmonger”. On the old shop, the firm advertised itself in letters painted straight onto the roof.

The Austin Street sign commemorates the business. The contemporary account places its 1897 premises on Darlot Street.

Together the two photographs preserve the wording visitors see in Cue today and the wording a customer would have seen more than a century ago.

Historical note

The two contemporary newspaper reports document the change from branch to head depot. See the photograph and the 1897 account on Trove. Read the 1909 report on Trove. Further records include the WA registration of firms, the firm’s advertisement in The Golden West, the railway tender notice and the March 1941 Government Gazette.