There was once another town here.

Drive only a few kilometres from Cue and the landscape gives little away. Yet in the early twentieth century Day Dawn was a substantial mining settlement with more than 3,000 residents, built around one of the great gold mines of the Murchison.

Shops, hotels, homes and community life once spread across the townsite. Almost all of it has disappeared. The great survivor is the Great Fingall Mine Office — a remarkable stone building that once housed administration, assay work and gold processing for one of the district's most important mines.

Great Fingall was gold mining on a grand scale.

Great Fingall became one of the most important mines in the district. The workings eventually extended to around 700 metres in depth, while the operation above ground employed large numbers of workers and supported the settlement around it.

Contemporary descriptions captured the confidence of the period. The mine's wealth helped justify railway development into the Murchison and supported a town with stores, hotels, homes and public life.

But Day Dawn's fortunes were tied tightly to the mine. When production weakened and Great Fingall finally closed in 1918, the economic foundation of the town disappeared with it.

More than 3,000 people once called Day Dawn home.

It is easy to stand at Day Dawn today and see only open country and mine workings. A century ago the experience was completely different.

Mine workers and their families lived alongside merchants, publicans, tradespeople and professionals. Stores supplied the town, hotels served the mining population and community institutions formed as Day Dawn became a permanent settlement rather than a temporary camp.

Its disappearance is part of what makes the site powerful. Day Dawn demonstrates how quickly a mining town could rise — and how quickly it could fade when the ore, investment and employment stopped.

The Canning Stock Route story begins here too.

Day Dawn also forms part of the prologue to one of Australia's most famous remote routes. In May 1906 Alfred Canning's survey party left Day Dawn with men, ponies and camels before heading north through Wiluna and into the Western Desert.

Two years later the connection was repeated. A surviving historical photograph records a Canning expedition leaving Day Dawn for the Kimberley on 17 March 1908 as work began on the chain of wells that would form the stock route.

The stock route also has a difficult Aboriginal history. Its survey and construction crossed the Country of many Aboriginal peoples, disrupted access to water and Country, and Canning's treatment of Aboriginal people during the survey became the subject of a Royal Commission. That history is an essential part of understanding the route today.

Look. Photograph. Do not enter.

The Great Fingall Mine Office is more than a century old and has suffered significant deterioration. Fencing has been installed around the building for safety.

View the building from outside the restricted area, do not climb fences or enter the structure, and obey all current signs and directions around the townsite and mine area.

Day Dawn is an easy goldfields detour from Cue.

Day Dawn is approximately 6 kilometres south-west of Cue. It works well as part of a half-day exploring Cue's mining history or as the first stop before continuing farther into the goldfields.