The headstones are few. The stories are not.

The Old Cemetery is one of Cue's most understated historic places. Scattered mounds, surviving stone memorials and iron grave surrounds mark only part of what lies here.

The Shire of Cue, working with Outback Grave Markers, has undertaken detailed research into the Cue Pioneer Cemetery and identified 66 known burials. Many original grave markers were made from timber and disappeared long ago through weather, termites and time, leaving much of the cemetery's story hidden in the ground and in old records.

The railway moved more than people and freight.

Before Cue had a formal cemetery, some of the earliest burials took place close to what is now Railway Street and the Town Oval area. As the railway reserve developed, those graves stood in the path of a piece of infrastructure that would transform the Murchison.

In November 1898, ten known graves were exhumed from the earlier burial ground near the railway area and reinterred here at the cemetery near Cue Hill so that railway works could proceed.

The Cue railway had opened in 1897 and the surviving station building followed in 1898. The relocation of these graves is a sobering reminder that the rapid growth of a gold-rush town sometimes literally rearranged what had come before it.

Many came looking for gold. Some never left.

The cemetery records read like a catalogue of the risks of early life in Cue: typhoid, dysentery, mining accidents, pneumonia, childbirth complications, sudden illness and other misfortune.

Typhoid appears again and again. Poor sanitation and contaminated water made enteric fever one of the great killers of the early Murchison goldfields, particularly before permanent health infrastructure and reliable water supplies were established.

The cemetery therefore connects directly with other Cue sites such as the Rotunda and first town well, Milly Soak and the Old Hospital. Together they tell the less glamorous side of the gold rush.

Charles Penberthy's grave still carries his name.

The prominent memorial visible at the cemetery belongs to Charles Penberthy, a miner and one of the men associated with Heffernan's party during the early Cue gold discoveries.

Penberthy died on 1 March 1894, aged 38, when explosives detonated prematurely in the New Year's Gift mine. Contemporary reports describe him as an experienced and highly respected miner, and his funeral drew a large attendance from the young goldfields community.

His surviving headstone is particularly valuable because so many other early markers were timber and have vanished.

Outback Grave Markers helped bring the cemetery's lost stories back.

The Shire of Cue partnered with Outback Grave Markers, a volunteer organisation that researches forgotten and unmarked graves across regional and remote Australia.

Their work goes well beyond placing a marker. Volunteers search historical newspapers, burial registers, family records and other archives; help locate graves whose physical markers have vanished; research the life and circumstances of the person buried there; and preserve those records in a searchable online database.

Through the Cue Pioneer Cemetery project, 66 known burials have been researched. Detailed stories have been recovered for at least 22 people, including the ten pioneers whose graves were relocated from the railway reserve in November 1898.

The result is important because many early graves no longer have a surviving headstone. Research can return a name, a life story and a place in Cue's history to a grave that might otherwise appear to be nothing more than a mound in the red earth.

Even the ground itself caused problems.

The cemetery near Cue Hill was difficult ground for burials, with suitable depth hard to achieve in places. As Cue became more established, a new cemetery was created south of town.

The present Cue Cemetery on Cemetery Road opened on 1 February 1902. The old site was left behind as a record of Cue's first intense decade — a period when the town appeared almost overnight and life could be brutally short.

This is a historic site — and still a cemetery.

The Old Cemetery is along Sandstone Road, about four kilometres from Cue. What appears at first to be open red ground contains graves whose markers may no longer survive, so move carefully and treat the whole fenced area as a burial place.