Life is Summer Bay seems idyllic, doesn’t it? Gorgeous picnic spots by beautiful rivers or outdoor celebrations by wide ocean views. Or when things turn nasty there always seems to be plenty of stretches of bush to get lost in, or spooky old houses that are falling apart at the seams!

No one knows these Summer Bay spots better than H&A’s location manager, Paul Ewing. Paul’s been helping find locations for all your fave Summer Bay moments for almost ten years from beach to bush - in fact when we caught up with him out at the Channel Seven studios, he had just cracked a tough assignment – the old abandoned house find!

"In story terms they have to be hard to find," he explains. "If you yell and scream, no one can hear your cries for help. You can’t just go to a website and look up abandoned houses. But we’re gonna use the one I found today – it’s hidden behind lots of trees, perfect!"

So which locations make the cut? "First you look at what’s involved in story," explains Paul. "Say, a car has to come screeching up out the front and we know this house is in a deserted area. So you start thinking, ‘What area is it in, is it a rural area or is it the city?’. From there I cover access – can I get 40 or 50 tonnes of trucks parked up nearby? Then it’s safety – is it on a really busy road? It becomes automatic. When you get there you can know almost straight away whether it’s going to work or not. Today I drove past 20 properties without stopping!"

The other main consideration is the location of the location – it can’t be in the middle of nowhere – even if that’s the look the script calls for. "Locations have to be close to each other," he agrees. "Especially in winter when you have nine or ten hours of sunlight you can’t spend all of your daylight hours driving."

"Cliff-tops which are safe are also hard," Paul says. "We did a cliff-top for Noah’s funeral. Natural locations with no civilisation are hard too”. Paul recalls the storyline involving the seaplane crash, and how the island location really was an island – water access only! Every day of shooting they had to disassemble the seaplane to fit it on the boat and then reassemble it on the island. "But it looked fantastic – 360 degree views!"

Considering all of Summer Bay’s location can be found in Sydney, some of the lovely outdoor settings might seem familiar to you: here’s a selection of our fave Home and Away locations that Paul’s found over the years.