The film is a character story, set between 1939 and 1942 against a dramatised backdrop of events across northern Australia at the time, such as the bombing of Darwin during World War II.

[5] In 1939, shortly before World War II, English noblewoman Lady Sarah Ashley travels to Australia to force her philandering husband to sell his faltering cattle station, Faraway Downs.

The station's manager, Neil Fletcher, secretly tries to gain control of Faraway Downs in order to sell it to meat tycoon Lesley 'King' Carney, thereby creating a complete cattle monopoly.

Drover leads a team of seven riders, including his Aboriginal brother-in-law Magarri, Nullah, Lady Sarah, and the station's accountant Kipling Flynn, to drive the 1,500 cattle to Darwin.

Drover and the children sail into port at Darwin as Nullah plays "Over the Rainbow" on his harmonica; Lady Sarah hears the music and the three are reunited.

Originally, Baz Luhrmann was planning to make a film about Alexander the Great starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicole Kidman, with a screenplay by David Hare.

[6] The director had built a studio in the northern Sahara but Alexander made by Oliver Stone was released first and after several years in development, Luhrmann abandoned the project to make a film closer to home.

[6] He decided to set the film between World Wars I and II in order to merge a historical romance with the Stolen Generations, where thousands of mixed-race Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families by the state and integrated into white society.

[7] In May 2006, due to Crowe's demanding personal script approval before signing onto the project, Luhrmann sought to replace the actor with Heath Ledger.

[11] In November 2006, Luhrmann began searching for an actor to play an Aboriginal boy of 8–10 years old and by April 2007, 11-year-old Brandon Walters was cast into the role of Nullah.

[12] Academic D. Bruno Starrs has written about how this casting choice and the decision to have the character of Nullah narrate the film reinforce its "left-leaning" message regarding the 'Stolen Generations'.

[17] Academy Award-winning costume designer Catherine Martin did extensive research for the film's outfits, studying archival images and newspapers from the 1930s and 1940s Australia.

She also interviewed descendants of the original Darwin stockmen in order to find out if they "wore socks with his boots when he rode a horse, that's something you either get through a snapshot, or something you have to go talk to the people who lived there about".

[6] Scenes using Darwin harbour were shot in July 2007, with parts of Stokes Hill Wharf blocked to the public and mini buses used to ferry tourists past the film set.

[28] Two weeks before the film's premiere, the Daily Telegraph erroneously reported that Luhrmann gave in to studio pressure after "intense" talks with executives and re-wrote and then re-shot the ending of Australia for a happier conclusion after "disastrous reviews" from test screenings.

[29] To counter these negative reports, the studio had Jackman and Kidman promoting Australia on The Oprah Winfrey Show, which dedicated an entire episode of the program to the film,[30] and Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman spoke to the Los Angeles Times where he described the Telegraph article as "patently nonsensical.

It's all too typical of the way the world works today that everybody picked up an unsourced, anonymous quote-filled story in a tabloid from Sydney and nobody ever bothered to check to see if it was accurate".

Also used in the end credits is "By the Boab Tree", a song nominated for a 2008 Satellite Award,[34] again with Luhrmann lyrics, performed by Sydney singer Angela Little.

Federal Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson said, "This movie will potentially be seen by tens of millions of people, and it will bring life to little-known aspects of Australia's extraordinary natural environment, history and indigenous culture".

The site's critical consensus reads, "Built on lavish vistas and impeccable production, Australia is unfortunately burdened with thinly drawn characters and a lack of originality.

[46] Bonnie Malkin of The Daily Telegraph (London) stated: "Local critics had worried that the much-anticipated film Australia would present to the world a series of time-honoured Antipodean clichés.

[47] Megan Lehmann, writing in the Hollywood Reporter, said that the film "defies all but the most cynical not to get carried away by the force of its grandiose imagery and storytelling," and it is "much less earnest than the trailer suggests, layered with a thin veneer of camp and a nod and a wink to accompany the requisite Aussie clichés," and the bottom line is "In epic style, Baz Luhrmann weaves his wizardry on Oz.

"[49] David Ansen, in his review for Newsweek, wrote, "Kidman seems to blossom under Luhrmann's direction: she's funny, warm and charming, and the erotic charge between her and the gruff, hunky Jackman is delicious.

"[50] In her review for the New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote, "This creation story about modern Australia is a testament to movie love at its most devout, cinematic spectacle at its most extreme, and kitsch as an act of aesthetic communion.

I must confess that I might have been harder on Mr Luhrmann's film if I had not remained entranced by Ms. Kidman ever since I first saw her in Phillip Noyce's Dead Calm in 1989; in my opinion, she has lost none of her luster in the 20 years since.

"[54] Nick Rogers, of FilmYap, adds that, "Luhrmann mythologized his homeland as American directors like John Ford did with Westerns—dramatic-license exaggerations that pay off in droves.

"[55] Ann Hornaday, in her review for the Washington Post, wrote, "A wildly ambitious, luridly indulgent spectacle of romance, action, melodrama and revisionism, Australia is windy, overblown, utterly preposterous and insanely entertaining.

"[56] In her review for Salon.com, Stephanie Zacharek wrote, "The second half of Australia, Luhrmann's attempt to pull off a wartime weeper, is so aggressively sentimental that it begins to feel more like punishment than pleasure.

[60][61] They further pointed out that Baz Luhrmann's other films, like Moulin Rouge!, Strictly Ballroom, and Romeo + Juliet, started slowly and then built momentum.

The website's consensus reads: "Faraway Downs may intrigue some as an interesting experiment, but Baz Luhrmann's reassessment of a past work doesn't fix the original Australia's deficiencies while adding to its bloat.