Trailer Tuesday: Australia

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Australia! There's a long rivalry between South Africa and our colonial cousin Down Under. But the truth of the matter is that Saffers are jealous of Aussies - there's a country that got it together.

While we gang rape 6 month old babies, douse foreigners in petrol and set them alight, torture tied up families with red-hot irons for their ATM codes, and brace ourselves for a president who not only has 16 charges of fraud and corruption against him, but also cheats on his wive/s with an HIV+ woman - all while we lumber around in Eskom enforced darkness - Australia's biggest "issue" seems to be Global Warming-related drought.

It's no wonder then that Oz seems to have become the number one destination for South Africans fleeing this country. Shit, even I'm considering settling there once I've got the travel bug out of my system. In fact, if you didn't know by now, Australia has just dramatically increased the number of visas available to go live and work there.


Anyway, as if the country didn't need selling any more, now there arrives the movie Australia, a sweeping epic sure to boost the country's rugged, pioneering image even further.

A romantic action-adventure set in northern Australia prior to World War II, AUSTRALIA centers on an English aristocrat (Nicole Kidman) who inherits a ranch the size of Maryland. When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn cattle driver (Hugh Jackman) to drive 2000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country's most unforgiving land, only to still face the bombing of Darwin, Australia by the Japanese forces that had attacked Pearl Harbor only months earlier.


Australia is the latest from Baz Luhrmann, the visionary director of Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet. His stylised films can be something of an acquired taste but Australia seems to be packed with his trademark Eye Candy. And the combination of Hugh Jackman (in a tuxedo even!) and WWII fighter planes - what more could a girl want?


It will be interesting to see how Australia fares with the critics and movie fans when it is released in November.

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