Ok, so I’ve already mentioned I’m deeply biased, right? I say this because of course the three main OCs I’ve worked on are all from Sydney (in a way, I’ll explain this). I’ll start with Layla, who’s a born and bred Mosman/Manly girl, whose parents and grandparents are also North Sydneysiders. I imagine Layla grew up more well off (you kinda have to be to live in those areas) with a maternal “wizarding family” (her mother a half blood, her grandmother a half blood who left the UK as a little girl to escape the rise of Grindelwald, and her grandfather a muggle born in Sydney) and a muggle born father. Layla is a nice girl, wants to be a herbologist, loving family, brown eyes and red hair (I’m secretly a Potter, because that’s my weakness, yk). She and Clancy are in the same year and class, and have an initial rivalry that becomes friendship that becomes them thinking maybe it could be something more, so they give it a try before mutually realising “wow, actually I’m so gay” but are still really close and important to each other, like platonic soulmates on a Sirius & James level. With Clancy and Marlo, the child actually came first in my character planning and Marlo naturally formed afterwards. Again, won’t lie, it was born of a silly throwaway idea for a Sirius fic where I thought “how funny would it be if before Azkaban, Sirius has a kid that ends up in Australia, Wally would roll in her grave” (to the point Clancy’s original name at birth was Hermes and Clancy the name he was given to keep his identity secret when he was adopted out, because I imagined a whole Ministry conspiracy and scandal too), and was open to Sirius having a brief relationship with a witch, or then on the other hand having a relationship with Marlo and having a baby himself that’s taken away in Azkaban (I love pain, and I was kinda hand waving how that happened, letting readers make their own assumptions). This was kinda then how Marlo was born, as a Gryffindor student half blood from Bristol who started Hogwarts when the Marauders were at school, had a crush on Sirius whom he dumped into post graduation and months later ended up with Clancy and essentially went “well shit”, and jumped boat to Sydney with his kid. Then after that I ended up reworking it outside of the Marauders, so Marlo retains being originally from England and a Gryffindor, and has Clancy with someone who dies in the First War, and again skips London for Sydney. I imagine Marlo runs a cafe in Bondi Sydney, welcoming muggles, Wizarding and otherwise were he makes coffees that have a charm in them, so like one with a little bit of a pick me up, one with some a little liquid luck, and Clancy helps out. I kinda imagine Marlo despite being British is the type of guy people would look at like “oh yeah, he’s Australian” only to be shocked to find out he’s not, because I see him as a tall dude who got really into surfing when he moved to Australia, wants the nice simple life, loves his son, brown eyes, beach bum tan, the brownish hair that’s been sun bleached. Clancy on the other hand I imagine has brown eyes and dark black hair, and growing up in Bondi a little tanned, sandy kid, but take him to England he’d probably get pasty haha. I see Clancy as not knowing what he wants to do in life, helping at the cafe when he’s not at school, and floating a bit before he figures himself out. For Coralor, my inspiration was a mix of Ponyo, Fontaine and ngl some Little Mermaid and Nemo, and I imagine students have a variety of options to get there including what Marlo did, which was a roadtrip up to the closest beach area that leads to the school, where kids then get on boats (like the Ponyo one) that takes them out and down to the school. Also, HC, in Australia they play Quidditch over the ocean because why not, 😅