Cue: Faded Grandeur

We stayed a few days in the dwindling town of Cue, once a thriving mining centre with vintage buildings, including the Emporium, Masonic Hall and Shire Hall lovingly renovated.

Just outside town are metal artworks, a memorial to Alfred Canning who was commissioned to lead an expedition from the Eastern Goldfields to survey a stock route north to Halls Creek in the Kimberley. It eventually became named the Canning Stock Route. 

Another point of interest is the statue of an Aboriginal man standing proud with his spear on top of orange rocks.

Further down the road are the ruins of the old hospital. Cue's first hospital, 1892, was a canvas and bough shed. In 1895, a new hospital was built of local stone with spacious wards and wide, shady verandahs. These are the ruins seen here.

Our jaunt out of town led down dirt roads, past new mines, to the ghost town of Big Bell that thrived on mining from 1933 to the 1950s. Now only the ruins of the large hotel remain.

Driving deeper into the Bush, we visited the sacred Aboriginal site of Walga Rock, rising high in the late afternoon sun, like a second Uluru. A rock gallery at its base has ancient rock paintings, some over 20,000 years old, including a more recent one that some historians say depicts a Dutch ship that landed in the north of Australia in the 17th century.

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Cue; Walga Rock; Western Australia