Wending our way slowly home from Victoria we passed a sign we often see, 'Carcour - Historic Town' and decided that we would make time to stop there this time instead of whizzing by and wondering what it was like as we usually do.
I checked Wikicamps and discovered it was possible to camp for free in self contained vehicles at the disused station. This was not a great place to stop because it was just a station car park up a huge hill quite a walk outside the town. So we asked in the pub and were told we could stop there. It was $20 for the night which is a bit steep to park a caravan in a field behind a pub, there was a toilet and shower but usually pubs make their camping cheap in exchange for buying a meal or some drinks there. However, it was ok and we were right in the centre of town so easy for exploring the next morning.
Carcour turned out to be as interesting as the sign on the main road promised. It was an old town, settled in 1830 with the the two main industries being mining and wheat farming. Carcour supposedly has one of the healthiest climates in Australia sitting 3000 ft above sea level. Apparently it rarely gets really hot during the day and, even if it does, the temperature always cools to a comfortable level at night. It was clearly once a pretty prosperous place as the main street was lined with very impressive buildings for a country town.

 Next stop on our journey was a place I have been itching to visit ever since I arrived in Australia, the ghost town Hill End. 
We thought we might have to pay through the nose to camp at Hill End because the town is a listed tourist attraction but that was not the case. There were two main campgrounds run by NSW National Parks and the one we stayed in (Village Campground) was excellent, spotless showers and toilets, washing machines and dryers all for $8 a night. 

Hill End was as exciting as I had hoped it would be with an excellent free museum telling the history of the town. It was settled in the gold rush in the 1850s. By the 1870s it had a population of 8000, two newspapers, five banks, eight churches and twenty eight pubs. Eventually the gold ran out and by 1945 the population was down to 700 and now only 80 people live there.
The buildings are being restored one by one and there are some fascinating walks marked out. We walked along the track to the Bald Hill Mine passing the ruins of Irish Town and Chinese Town (clearly the various immigrants did not like to mix). The track itself was littered with pieces of quartz and there were King Parrots in the trees, huge kangaroos lounging about in the hot sun around every bend, we even saw a deer!

 The surrounding countryside was dry and hilly and reminded me a bit of Greece with winding roads teetering above sheer drops down the hillside, the only difference being that in Australia there is generally clearly room for two vehicles to pass which has not always been my experience in Greece!