But there are few live music venues and few opportunities for young people to get together to do anything other than surf, shop, drink and bonk. But, like the West Australian music scene that has spawned such great pop bands as the Sleepy Jackson, Little Birdy and Eskimo Joe, the Central Coast's relative isolation has helped foster a punk-rock music scene.

In the past five years, Central Coast punk has exploded, with bands such as One Dollar Short, After The Fall, Something With Numbers and In The Grey breaking onto the national airwaves. After The Fall have a street team alone of 5000 - 15- to 25-year-old fans who'll stick up posters even in Sydney in return for tickets and merchandise. The scene also helped spawn a record company. Below Par was started in 2000 by enterprising schoolchildren Jai Alattas and Mark Cantanzariti after they were kicked out of their school golf class. Their early signings were Something With Numbers and In The Grey.

Below Par went on to sign distribution deals with heavyweights such as John Watson's influential Eleven music company (Missy Higgins, the Dissociatives). After celebrating his 23rd birthday recently, Alattas jetted off to New York to expand his growing empire. And it all started in a shopping centre - the mega mall that is Erina Fair.

Walking the muzak-drenched length of Erina Fair, past the teak-panelled clothing stores and surf shops covered in garish graphics, the food court and the ice rink, you come to the surprisingly diminutive HMV outlet. It's hard to believe this tiny store would be the focus of a unifying youth movement in sound, attitude and outfit. In the store, there's an abundance of pop music, but the giveaway is the full-to-bursting alternative/metal section and the black-shirted kids from Terrigal and Avoca at the counter, eagerly discussing Something With Numbers' instore performance later today.

The store is among the only sources of import-only punk, rock and hardcore on the coast. There's also a good chance the records the kids are buying feature the store's staff. In The Grey lead singer Adam Byrne works at HMV Erina, just as the man who helped start the Central Coast's punk scene did.

One Dollar Short's huge, pierced and inked singer Scott E. Woods started working at HMV Erina in 1996, ordering in the first wave of pop/punk and emo (emotional punk) from the US. "I was sent massive catalogues of music that wasn't even licensed for release in Australia," Woods says. "As a big collector of rare music, it was awesome to be able to bring in all this new stuff that I had only heard about. "It was bands like Pennywise and Lagwagon, all that straight-down-the-line Fat Wreck Chords stuff. Also, I brought in bands like the Get Up Kids and early Alkaline Trio releases."

Woods noticed that young music fans were also into the bands he was importing and that there was no local equivalent. So he started his own band. "The band happened in 1999," Woods says.

"My interests in punk and the influence they had on One Dollar Short went hand in hand. I guess people try to deny their influences, but I've never seen the point in that." One Dollar Short's debut album, 2003's 8 Days Away, reached No. 10 in the ARIA charts and spawned four top-40 singles. But their real impact was local: Woods showed kids on the coast a local band could get songs on commercial radio and play major festivals.

As well as an inspiration, Woods became a mentor to the emerging wave of local noisy pop, punk and hardcore bands while at HMV. "I'd get the bands to bring their cassette demos to reps, try to help them out," he says.

"I can't claim responsibility for their success." One Dollar Short also helped local bands such as After The Fall by giving them support slots on their national tours. One Dollar Short guitarist Trent Crawford's East Gosford guitar store also became a hub for musicians such as After The Fall lead guitarist Mark Warner, who hangs out there regularly. Warner credits One Dollar Short with kickstarting his early ambition.

"I was guitar tech for those guys when they played Homebake for the first time and I remember thinking that I'd love to be up there," Warner says. "It was a great experience, though they were hardly paying me anything. We got to do Homebake for ourselves this year, although I was still restringing my own guitars." Woods says the lack of a live music scene on the coast meant that local bands rarely had the opportunity to play there, spending most of their time rehearsing for Sydney shows.

"There wasn't really many local bands playing on the coast," Woods says. "We got some lucky breaks from [Sydney band] Frenzal Rhomb." Now Central Coast youth clubs fill to capacity for the occasional show, but there are still too few consistent local venues. "There is so little to do up here," says After The Fall's Warner. "We'd prefer to get together and head to Sydney to see or play at a show."

Unfortunately for Woods and One Dollar Short, punk tastes have changed somewhat. The focus of modern punk has moved away from the commercially friendly, melodic pop/punk genre and toward a darker, more emotive and aggressive sound.

The emo and, more recently, "screamo" genres resonate loudly with audiences of young teens and early twentysomethings. Woods explains that both genres are typified by brutal melodies, personal or progressively political lyricism and crushing vocal performances, drawing heavily on the noise and intensity coming out of the decidedly anti-mainstream hardcore movement. Early acts from the Central Coast drew on American punk influences from like-minded surf-centric suburban centres such as San Diego, places that spawned the early wave of pop-punk such as Blink-182.

More recently, bands such as Utah's screamo pioneers the Used plus New Jersey's Thursday and My Chemical Romance have popularised the more aggressive end of the punk spectrum. The change has left bands such as One Dollar Short and major-label contemporaries 28 Days out in the cold, but Woods isn't bitter.

"It's a whole new generation," he says. "Every genre has its shining moment, when the sound comes to epitomise the movement, and I think that is happening now with screamo. "I was a big metal fan and was enticed across to punk because of the melodies and the energy involved. I think the new stuff is the perfect combination of the intensity of hardcore combined with the energetic melodies of punk music." And Woods may be moving back into metal territory with his new project, the Autumn Fire.

One Dollar Short, having already taken a lengthy break due to touring burnout, recently announced an "indefinite break" following the release of their second album, Receiving Transmission. Woods, who's also working as a producer, is enthusiastic about seeing the Central Coast punk scene he helped start do so well, but the musician in him admits to some envy.

"After The Fall are over in the States doing South By Southwest and - I can't lie - I'm a touch envious. I'm just keen to get my own stuff out there now," he says. "If you want to make it in the music industry, it is definitely tough. You just have to enjoy what you have, while you have it."