Discover Cue • Our Story

History &
Heritage

Country, pastoral stations, goldfields and generations of people shaped the Cue we know today.

From ancient Wajarri Country and one of Australia's most significant Aboriginal ochre mining traditions to pastoral settlement, the rush for gold, camel expeditions, grand civic buildings, vanished mining towns and the beginnings of the Canning Stock Route story.

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The story of a place

Cue did not begin with gold

The gold rush transformed Cue almost overnight, but it arrived in a landscape with a human story stretching back thousands of years.

Wajarri people have lived, travelled, traded and maintained cultural connections across this country since long before written records. Places throughout the district remain part of that continuing cultural landscape.

In the Weld Range north-west of Cue lies Wilgie Mia, an Aboriginal ochre mine of exceptional cultural and national heritage significance. Ochre obtained from the area travelled through extensive traditional exchange networks across vast distances.

Wilgie Mia remains an important place in Wajarri tradition and is culturally restricted. Its significance belongs within the deeper history of Cue and the Weld Range rather than as a general visitor attraction.

At Walga Rock — Walganha — Aboriginal rock art provides another powerful connection with this much older history. But before the gold rush arrived, another industry had already begun changing the Murchison landscape.

Aboriginal rock art at Walga Rock near Cue
Walganha • Wajarri Country

Before the rush

To understand Cue's history, the story has to begin before prospectors arrived.

Walga Rock is one of the district's significant cultural places. Its rock art and surrounding landscape are reminders that the history of this country is far older than the mines, roads and buildings that came later.

Together with places such as Wilgie Mia in the Weld Range, it places Cue's later pastoral and goldfields history within a much longer human story.

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1870s • Before the goldfields

Pastoral country

Before prospectors rushed to the Murchison, pastoralists were already establishing stations across the region.

From the 1870s, pastoral runs were taken up across the Murchison and stocked with sheep and cattle. In this vast dry landscape, access to water determined where stations could operate and how stock could move.

Wells, soaks, stock routes, shearing sheds and homesteads became part of a pastoral network stretching across country surrounding what would later become Cue.

Pastoralism established an enduring regional industry before the discovery of gold — and unlike many of the early mines, it did not disappear when a particular boom ended.

Pastoral gathering at Coodardy Station near Cue in March 1979
More than an early chapter

Station life became part of Cue

The pastoral industry created communities far beyond the town itself. Station owners, managers, stockmen, shearers, contractors and families travelled into Cue for supplies, business, government services, schooling, sport and social occasions.

Aboriginal people were central to the pastoral industry throughout inland Western Australia. Knowledge of Country and water, together with the work of Aboriginal stockmen, station workers and their families, became an important part of station life. That history also includes dispossession, unequal conditions and periods of exploitation that form part of the broader pastoral story.

Through changing seasons, markets, droughts and new technology, pastoral properties have remained part of the economic and social fabric of the Cue district. The station story is not simply Cue's past — it remains part of the district today.

Early 1890s

Then came gold

Gold did not create the first European activity in the district — but it changed its scale almost overnight.

One of the stories preserved in Cue's history tells of an Aboriginal prospector known as Governor, who was seen with a substantial gold nugget from the Cuddingwarra area west of present-day Cue.

On New Year's Day 1892, Michael Fitzgerald discovered gold at what became known as the Kintore Blow, close to today's town centre. Fitzgerald's partner Tom Cue travelled to Nannine to register the claim.

His name became attached to the growing settlement: Cue.

1892
Gold at the Kintore Blow sparks the rapid growth of the settlement that becomes Cue.
1892–1900

A town rises from the red dirt

Word travelled quickly. Prospectors, merchants, tradespeople and families arrived and the rough camp around the gold workings began turning into a permanent town.

Cue was gazetted as a townsite in 1893. Within only a few years substantial commercial, government and community buildings were appearing along Austin Street and nearby roads.

Cue increasingly served not only the mines but the pastoral stations spread across the surrounding Murchison.

Historic Austin Street in Cue Western Australia
Austin Street during Cue's early years.
Boom did not mean easy

Water, disease and survival

Whether running stock or chasing gold, life in the Murchison was shaped by one essential resource: water.

For pastoralists, reliable wells determined where stock could move and where stations could operate. For the rapidly growing goldfields town, the sudden concentration of people placed enormous pressure on water supply and sanitation.

Enteric or typhoid fever swept through the camps. Residents organised hospital support, nurses and fundraising while the growing town struggled to provide the infrastructure needed for its expanding population.

Great Fingall Mine Office at Day Dawn
Just south of Cue

Day Dawn rises

Cue was not the only town transformed by gold.

A few kilometres away, Day Dawn grew around major mining operations including the Great Fingall. By the late 1890s it was a substantial mining settlement in its own right.

The Great Fingall became one of the great mines of the Murchison. Its imposing mine office still stands above the former workings — one of the district's most recognisable links with that era.

Discover Day Dawn
A forgotten beginning

Before Well 1,
there was Day Dawn

The Canning Stock Route begins near Wiluna. But the story of the expeditions that created it begins further south — at Day Dawn.

Historic Canning expedition preparing to leave Day Dawn for the Kimberley
Canning expedition leaving Day Dawn for the Kimberley, 17 March 1908.

In May 1906, Alfred Canning's survey party set out from Day Dawn with men, ponies and camels before continuing north from Wiluna into country that would eventually become associated with one of Australia's best-known stock routes.

Two years later the connection was repeated. The historical photograph records the 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.

Today most travellers think of Wiluna as the southern gateway to the Canning Stock Route. Historically, however, Cue and Day Dawn form part of its prologue.

Driving the Canning?
Start the story before you start the track.

Visit Cue and Day Dawn and stand where expedition parties prepared to head north more than a century ago.

Visit Day Dawn
The whole story matters

The Canning Stock Route also has a difficult history

The route crossed the Country of many Aboriginal peoples whose knowledge of water and Country was fundamental to travel through the Western Desert.

Its surveying and construction disrupted Aboriginal 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.

More than a mining town

Gold and wool built a regional centre

Gold made Cue famous, but pastoralism helped sustain its role as the service centre of a much larger district.

Station owners and workers came to Cue for supplies, business, government services and social life. Merchants and transport links served both the mines and pastoral properties spread across the Murchison.

The railway became a lifeline for the wider district. Freight arriving from the south carried supplies for stations, miners and townspeople, while trains heading back carried wool, sheep and cattle alongside ore and other mineral products.

Mining boomed and declined repeatedly, but pastoralism remained part of Cue's economy, identity and community.

The boom survives

History still standing

Cue is unusual because so much of its historic townscape survived.

More than a century after the first boom, Austin Street still contains substantial nineteenth and early twentieth-century buildings. Government, banking, accommodation, commerce, justice and community life are all represented in the streetscape.

Cue's buildings also reflect its role as a regional centre serving miners, pastoralists, travellers and communities spread across an enormous part of the Murchison.

Explore Cue's Historic Buildings
Another generation of gold

Then came Big Bell

The gold story did not end with the nineteenth-century rush. In the 1930s a new purpose-built mining settlement emerged at Big Bell, south-west of Cue.

At its height the town had hundreds of residents, shops, a post office, hospital, sporting organisations and churches. When large-scale mining ceased in the 1950s, much of the town disappeared. Its roads, foundations, church and the remains of the imposing Big Bell Hotel survive in the landscape.

Bring the pieces together

Cue Heritage Centre

The Heritage Centre brings together objects, displays and stories from Cue and the surrounding Murchison.

Located inside the Cue Community & Visitor Centre
72 Austin Street, Cue WA 6640

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Displays inside the Cue Heritage Centre
Now meet the people

Historical Photograph Collection

The buildings survive. The photographs bring their people back into the story.

Hundreds of historical photographs are displayed across two storeys of the Shire Office. Together they form an extraordinary visual record of Cue, Day Dawn and the wider Murchison.

Mining, pastoral life, transport, families, businesses, expeditions, streets and everyday life all appear throughout the collection.

Shire of Cue Office
73 Austin Street, Cue WA 6640

Take the time to explore both levels.

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Start your journey in Cue

There is more here than a gold rush

Spend time in Cue and discover a story that stretches from ancient Country through pastoral settlement, goldfields, historic towns and journeys into the Australian interior.