An Australian woman found an abandoned hotel and general store frozen in time while out for a drive with her family.
Jo Quinley, from New South Wales, said she and her family were playing an exploration game which led to the historical site.
"We have a little card game which gives you random directions to follow," Quinley told 9News.
"You might be going down the road and if you see a paddock full of sheep, you've got to turn left. If there's cows, you turn right."
She said the game led them to a crumbling building and the family looked inside. Much to their shock, they found it was a still furnished hotel and general store with relics from when the area was operational as a mining town.
Quinley said the building was next to an old cemetery and a disused mineshaft was nearby.
She said the hotel contained a piano, and other rooms had a record player and an old-fashioned chrome and wood television set.
Quinley said that some of the rooms still contained items from past hotel guests, finding clothing left behind.
"It was really strange. There was all of this clothing still there, which is not something that most people would leave behind."
She said the general store also had relics from the past.
"In the part of the building where the general store was, there was a shop counter painted pink with a whole heap of box shelves behind it.
"And if you went around behind the counter, there was an open cellar. I was not expecting that, it looked a bit scary," she said.
She said the hotel left a lasting impression on her and her family.
"It made us sad, actually, because you can imagine there would have been so many happy times there and it's just been left — for whatever reason."
Quinley said the building was in very poor condition and repairs did not look possible.
"I don't think it was from vandalism, it was just that it has been left for far too long," she said.
"The floor was very bouncy; it was obviously waterlogged."
9News chose not to share the exact location of the site to protect the buildings, but historical records from the area shows that nearby zinc, lead and gold mines were all closed by 1915.
There are no shops operating in the remains of the old mining town and the Australian Bureau of Statistics Census data from 2021 shows there are less than 50 residents who live in the area.
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