Tourism Australia has been trying to come up with a way to market the highpoints of the country in hopes of drawing more tourists to the land Down Under. Finally, they may have done it with the epic film “Australia”, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.

The film, set in northern Australia on the eve of World War II, depicts an English aristocrat (Kidman) who inherits a sprawling property and falls in love with a rugged drover (Jackman). Together, Kidman and Jackman are caught in the wartime bombing of Darwin by the Japanese while attempting to take 2,000 cattle overland. The film was directed by flamboyant home-grown director Baz Luhrmann.

The film, Luhrmann’s first film since Kidman’s hit vehicle Moulin Rouge in 2001, was shot on location in the tropical city of Bowen, the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia, and the Northern Territory capital Darwin.

“This movie will potentially be seen by tens of millions of people and it will bring to life little-known aspects of Australia’s extraordinary natural environment, history, and indigenous culture,” Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson said at the weekend.

Critics have predicted that the film will be full of worn out Australian cliches. Tourism industry officials have high hopes for the film, predicting that it will kick start the next wave of the country’s tourist arrivals which have been in decline since the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

A Tourism Australia official told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper that “Australia” would be “basically a two and a half hour ad” for the country.

www.tourism.australia.com