Leaving “Meeka” with a friendly south-easterly tail wind, we battled the road-trains as we made our way to the next town, Cue.

Cue

On this cloudy, but still warm morning, we pull over and stretched our legs around Cue, another gold rush town with a population now of less than two hundred people.

Cue has many interesting heritage-listed building including Murchison Lodge 22 which was active from 1899 to 1979. Corrugated iron was used extensively during the Western Australian gold rushes because it was easily transported by camels. Now owned by the National Trust of Australia, the Cue Masonic Temple is believed to be the biggest, free standing, double story corrugated iron structure in the southern hemisphere.

The Big Bell Hotel

About thirty kilometres south-west of Cue lies the ghost town of Big Bell. A gold mine open here in 1935 and the town of Big Bell sprung up in 1936. A year later the grand two-story art deco Big Bell Hotel was opened. Check out this bewildering spectacle in our Youtube Video:

After enjoying lunch at Big Bell, we journeyed on to Mount Magnet to refuel and take a look around the town. With a population of around 450, Mt, Magnet is one of the region’s original gold mining towns, and the longest surviving gold mining settlement in Western Australia.

A few kilometres south of Mount Magnet turn to the right off the Great Northern Highway, now heading west on the Geraldton-Mount Magnet Road and still undecided as to where to camp for the night.

Coming Up: It was Yalgoo!