Australia is a 2008 epic adventure drama film directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. The screenplay was written by Luhrmann and screenwriter Stuart Beattie, with Ronald Harwood and Richard Flanagan. 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, and government policies of seizing half-caste Aboriginal children then in effect.

Plot

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 huge station straddles Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Her husband sends an independent cattle drover, called "The Drover", to transport her to Faraway Downs. Lady Sarah's husband is murdered before she arrives; the authorities tell her the killer is an Aboriginal elder nicknamed "King George". 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. At Darwin, Australian Army logistics officer Captain Dutton negotiates beef prices with Carney.