walking tour
The Carcoar Historical Society has published a free handy map and associated walking tour of Carcoar which can be obtained from the Court House and the Enterprise General Stores or downloaded from this website.

This tour of Carcoar's rich architectural heritage tells the story of colonial NSW from the era of wattle and daub huts, through the heady days of the gold rush and then the long slow decline that began with the devastating financial crash of the 1890's. Carcoar never fully recovered the vigour of those early years and now only the architecture remains to give us some sense of the unbridled optimism of the period.

To an historian's eye, the beauty of Carcoar is that it seems to have almost one of everything that would define a typical late Victorian town - a Catholic convent and church sitting on top of a hill, a modest Presbyterian church, a discreet Edmund Blacket Church of England, a George Mansfield designed CBC bank for the money, and a collection of typical 19th century government buildings such as a railway station, a primary school, a School of Arts, a police station and lock up,and of course the beautiful James Barnet designed Court House.

The only thing that seems to be missing is the town - and that perhaps is what has saved Carcoar from the unsympathetic commercial signage and intrusive modern building that obscures so much of what remains of NSW's colonial architecture.

A visit to Carcoar is a walk back through time.

Download Heritage Walking Tour in PDF Format - 600k.