The Ghost Pub

Thirty kilometres out of Cue, following dirt tracks in the middle of nowhere, you suddenly come upon a huge 1930's stone pub standing alone in the desert. It is so bizarre and unexpected that you blink; it's like a mirage or something left over from a Fellini film.

It's the site of the Big Bell township, a tiny gold boom town built almost instantly in 1936. The pub, which is enormous, had the longest bar in Australia. Behind it were rows of little streets and small houses; all that's left of them now are the foundations, the shell of the Catholic church and one or two crumbling buildings, sitting among the rows of planted trees and a few remaining bits of fence. Where the school used to be you can still see the old concrete water fountain. The town was abandoned, along with the mine, in 1955; sadly, no one thought to preserve it, and the once magnificent pub is now stripped of its pressed tin ceilings, wall tiles and fittings.

You can see that it was once an oasis of garden plots, carefully tended trees and beautifully made stone buildings. There was even a railway spur line running from Cue. We walked around inside the old pub, which has been badly damaged & graffitied, and drove along the old streets. Then we went over to the old open pit mine and Gary got the ute up over a very rocky hill; in the distance you can see the pub, weird and hallucinatory in the middle of the plains.

Big Bell pub from the southwest side

The front of the pub

Front of the pub - magnificent

The old Catholic church, and the pub in the background

Big Bell pub from the back

The school's drinking fountain

The main bar - it stretched from where Gary's standing now...

...all the way to the back

Big Bell pub as you drive up

Gold fever graffiti

The Big Bell pub from up on the mine tailings hill