Location Location LOCATION!!!!

Hi Alice, if your story is set in Australia there's about a million such towns up and down our coast. Thinking of forests specifically, the south coast of NSW has a lot of little towns of that size. Eden, Bega, Milton. It's a beautiful region, with untouched temperate rainforests and empty beaches.

How about one of the places in the Daintree? Or the Jarra forests of WA which are very special. It depends upon how remote you want to be and how forrested.

I suggest to have a look at the State forests we have here in Aus. Then pick a town that is suitable for your needs.

JJ

You should set it in your own town, if it doesn't quite fit the bill then change the name and the town. A good example of this is an author named Jan Karon who set some books in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, which is a very touristy town in the Appalacian mountains. She didn't want the touristy part so she took that out and made it more of a small town and changed the name to Mitford. Some of the surrounding towns are also in the book and she changed their names, too.

Unless the town just has to be real make up a name and put the town wherever it needs to be to fit.

I don't know Australia at all, but I suggest Google Earth. Once you find a setting, I suggest googling that town. There are all kinds of forums, and perhaps though it's a small town you can find message boards and people online who have lived or live there for more information.

The East Coast of the US has lots of places that fit your requirements--coastal but with forests. If you want such a low population, try somewhere very Northern (the good old state of Maine, perhaps) or in the South, although coastal towns tend to be fairly populous because everyone wants to live in them.

But that's the US.

If you want your town to be 2-3 hours from the nearest next town, I think you have a problem with any coastal forested town in either U.S. or Australia, so you might have to make it up - which authors do all the time.

However, if you still want it to be real, I think you have a better chance of finding something like that in WA than NSW or Qld., which is far more populated and rarely more than 1/2 hour or so from the nearest next town, especially one with a high school. Even around the Daintree you aren't far from Cairns, Port Douglas, etc. Port Douglas would be a fun place to set your story, but again...not 2-3 hours from the nearest town.

The Jarrah forests are beautiful and special, as Mumut says, but any high schools nearby? Maybe you could set it in the Jarrah forest and put a fictional town and a high school there?

If you make it fictional, it would depend on how real you want the information about the area to be. Since you've already said you're 16 and haven't travelled much, then it would make sense to set it in Australia, since that's the most comfortable and easily researched culture for you.

Good luck with your story!

Bluestone makes good points. I also second the use of Google Maps for armchair research.

Albedo said:

Bluestone makes good points. I also second the use of Google Maps for armchair research.

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I wrote a book set in rural America. I had been to only half the places I wrote about, the rest I used Google earth and various fact websites to fill in the lay of the land and details of the cities. Boy the internet sure is handy.

Alice.S said:

A town that if say the whole town become dead no one outside would notice.

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Oh, you mean Brisbane?

I think the easiest way is to put a town that you know into a different setting - or pick the best bits of a couple of places and mash them together (worked for me!)

Stormhawk said:

Oh, you mean Brisbane?

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*Ouch*