Sydney  - His Outback romancing and cattle mustering done, Sydney-born Hollywood actor Hugh Jackman lives the dream of many successful Australians and pads about in a five-bedroom penthouse with commanding views of the harbour.

His distressed damsel in the feature film Australia, Sydney-girl Nicole Kidman, picks the countryside for her downtime. She is currently camping in a rented property with country singer Keith Urban and new baby Sunday Rose while workmen finish building their dream home.

Jackman's near neighbour is Adelaide-born city-slicker Rupert Murdoch. He put up the 100-million-US-dollar budget for Baz Luhrmann to direct an all-Australian epic they hope will generate new interest in their beloved country.

Jackman and Murdoch live within sight of the Hudson River in New York. Kidman, who recently bought in Los Angeles, resides mainly in Nashville, Tennessee. Kidman credited her pregnancy to swims in mystical waters while on location in the tropical north.

Luhrmann has spoken lyrically about his time under the stars. "The sun would come down ... we'd sit around the fire and you'd look up at that sky and, yes, I had that experience," he said. "I remember sitting there thinking, no matter what the outcome of the film, this is what I'm looking for. I'm still in this moment, that's what this place can do for you."

In reality, living in a Winnebago for a few weeks is not the same as living a life on the land. In truth, Luhrmann's magic moments under big skies were just that - magic moments.

The Australia of Australia is about as authentic as the fibre-glass boab trees that Luhrmann had flown in to the film lot because he didn't like the position of the real ones.

Luhrmann intended to play up the myths rather than deflate them. "I think even now, to the rest of the world, Australia just means big, somewhat mysterious, somewhat misunderstood," he said. "This is a land far, far away. It has a sense of fairytale about it."

Jackman, Kidman, Murdoch and other expatriates often get maudlin about the land they left.

On the wall of his Manhattan office, Murdoch has a canvas by bush painter Russell Drysdale entitled The Stockman and His Family. The media mogul says the painting "captures the empathy of shared solitude ... a characteristic of our vast continent."

For the most part, Australia is not mysterious. It's one of the world's most urbanized societies. Shared solitude is a nonsensical notion to the one in three who lives in either Sydney or Melbourne. The lot of most Australians is gridlocked roads, packed trains and housing estates marching to the horizon.

Novelist Richard Flannagan, who worked on the script with Luhrmann, said "Baz is always trying to take a different idea of Australia to the world, which is very much the ambition of this movie."

It's an idea of Australia that nowadays not many Australians recognize. The quarter of Australians born abroad would have difficulty sharing Flannagan's view that their home is a "unique and special place on the edge of the world."

To most immigrants, life in Australia is life in a city - and that is neither unique nor special.

John Howard, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's predecessor, had some success over his 11 years in office in making Australians "relaxed and comfortable" with themselves and their place in the world. His chief weapon was a booming economy.

Howard stoked the same romanticized view that Luhrmann pushes. "It's part of the psyche of this country, it's part of the essence of Australia, to have a rural community," Howard said when promising cash for drought-stricken farmers. "We would lose something of our identification as Australians if we ever allowed the number of farms in our nation to fall below a critical mass."

Rudd, now into his second year as prime minister, doesn't effervesce about the Outback. He's as likely to see Luhrmann's epic as a useful promotional video than as a paean of praise for the hardy souls that live down long dusty roads. (dpa)