Sydney - With a novice director, a tiny budget, small-time actors and the skimpiest of plots, 1986's Crocodile Dundee became the most successful Australian film of all time.

Australia, in cinemas in November, is at the other end of the spectrum: huge budget, big-name stars, grand themes - and extravagant and extraordinary claims.

"I never thought I would get pregnant and give birth to a child, but it happened on this movie," leading lady Nicole Kidman, 41, said this week. "Nothing happened in a small way on this film. We had heat and torrential rains and equine flu, and then I got pregnant."

If big always meant better, director Baz Luhrmann's first feature since 2001's Moulin Rouge would be assured of recouping its 100-million-US-dollar price tag and cementing Kidman's reputation and that of her leading lad, fellow Australian Hugh Jackman.

If the boosters were always right, tourists by the tens of thousands would hightail it to see the magnificent countryside on display in the World War II romantic drama, meet its cheery folk and share in the celebration of a faraway land that keeps to the old ways.

Lurhmann, making his fourth feature in 16 years, has taken as his touchstone films of vaulting ambition like Gone with the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia and Out of Africa.

"It's high comedy, high tragedy, tears, laughter, costumes," Luhrmann has said of his own epic. "Everything big - big actors, big landscape."

Luhrmann - never one to undersell a product - also claimed Australia was about the small things in life.

"It's fundamentally about the importance of fighting to keep those that you truly love together despite the difficulties," he said.

The screenplay is mostly his, helped along by Gould's Book of Fish author Richard Flanagan.

Kidman plays English aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley, who arrives in the sunburned country before the outbreak of war to take over the running of a zillion-hectare cattle property called Faraway Downs.

Lots of dusty and dangerous adventures later, our whip-cracking heroine ends up in the arms of Jackman, who plays the rough and ready cowboy who saves the farm. The lovers survive attacks on Darwin by Japanese bombers. Lady Sarah loses her paleness as she grows to adore the wide brown land and its hard-handed people.

Those who have seen footage remarked on the breadth and scale of the undertaking, the quality of the cinematography and the worshipful treatment of the Outback.

The white folk are mentally sturdy and physically strong, the Aborigines have a spiritual bond with the landscape, there is endless space and the opportunities are limitless for those who don't mind the flies and the poor soil.

"Baz is always trying to take a different idea of Australia to the world, which is very much the ambition of this movie," Flannagan said. "It's the first time anyone has tried to make a blockbuster outside of America, and that's what he's doing."

According to Flannagan, it's all made with Australian talent - from the producer, director, all the creators, all the stars, everything.

"It will be an idea of Australia, a story about Australia, taking Australia to the world," he said.

Wisely or otherwise, the Australian government is promoting the film, trusting it would make locals proud and be a boon to hotels and tour operators.

Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson is dead keen, saying, "This movie has the capacity to redefine the way Australians and the rest of the world see Australia as a destination, and it's up to all of us to capture that potential for the tourism industry."