Located 350 kilometres/217 miles from Sydney CBD, Cassilis is a pleasant little village of a hundred people, located just off the Golden Highway on the Munmurra River. It is 43 km north-west of Merriwa, 86 km north-east of Mudgee and 358 km north-west of Sydney. The main streets have been declared an urban conservation area.

Cassilis began in the 1830s as a private village called Dalkeith which served the Cassilis and Dalkeith stations. It was gazetted as a town and named Cassilis in 1869.

Aboriginal bushranger Jimmy Governor worked as a police tracker at Cassilis just prior to taking up a job at Breelong where he started a three-month rampage which resulted in the murder of ten people. His story served as the basis of Thomas Keneally's novel The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith which was made into a film. Governor lived behind the police station.