A man has been charged with killing a woman whose stabbed body was found in bushland three decades ago.

Elizabeth Dixon, 31, was discovered in a car in bushland at Ashtonfield, in the NSW Central Hunter region, in April 1982.

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Thirty-three years later, after receiving new information, police arrested a 64-year-old man at his home in Stockton on Wednesday.

He has been charged with murder and refused bail to appear in Raymond Terrace Local Court on Thursday.