These buildings were recycled before recycling was fashionable.

The Pensioner Huts — officially recorded as the Cue Pensioners Cottages — are a row of six small timber-framed buildings now located within the Cue Tourist Park.

Their story begins not in Cue, but at the mining town of Big Bell. When that town declined in the 1950s, buildings from the former hospital complex were given a new life in Cue rather than being abandoned with the rest of the town.

Their first life was at Big Bell Hospital.

Big Bell was developed as a purpose-built mining town in the 1930s and included its own hospital. The small buildings that later became Cue's Pensioner Huts formed part of that hospital complex and are identified by the Shire as former nurses’ quarters.

When mining activity declined and much of Big Bell was dismantled, buildings and materials were salvaged rather than simply left behind. These six cottages were among the pieces of Big Bell that found a second life in Cue.

That makes them more than modest little huts: they are surviving fabric from a town that otherwise largely disappeared.

Built for people who had spent their lives in the bush.

In 1955 the Cue Roads Board resolved to seek land for subsidised accommodation for elderly pensioners and former prospectors living in the district.

The idea reflected a very practical local problem. Men who had spent decades prospecting, mining and working throughout the Murchison were growing older, often without substantial housing or financial resources.

Reusing the small Big Bell buildings provided a relatively inexpensive way to create simple accommodation while also keeping a piece of the district's mining history in use.

Six buildings made the journey from Big Bell to Cue.

In August 1958, the first of the small former hospital buildings was moved from Big Bell to the Cue site.

By December all six cottages had been relocated and arranged as a row of small pensioner dwellings. A communal bath and laundry served the cottages, and a recreation hut was added later.

Their scale and simple construction are very different from Cue's grand nineteenth-century stone buildings. That contrast is part of their heritage significance: they represent the leaner years after the first gold boom and the practical reuse of what was available.

Even the pensioner cottages found another use.

The cottages continued to provide pensioner accommodation for decades and became an important local facility in their own right.

During Cue's 2004 Qfest they were tidied up and used for tourist accommodation, demonstrating again how adaptable the little buildings have been.

The Shire's current visitor information describes the huts as being progressively restored for use as backpacker-style accommodation associated with the Cue Tourist Park — yet another chapter in buildings that have already travelled from hospital accommodation to pensioner housing and tourism.

A little piece of Big Bell in Cue.

The Pensioner Huts are located within the Cue Tourist Park at 1 Convict Court, Cue. They form part of the park’s historic accommodation precinct, so please respect any current guests, restoration works and access restrictions.