Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman are making friends with their neighbours. No, they aren’t leaving their respective partners to shack up in a private love nest, but are making a movie in the Australian outback, appropriately titled Australia.

The stars flew in to Western Australia last week, after the Kununurra set dried out.

There had been a major delay in filming because of torrential rains in the outback area, forcing the entire cast and crew back to Sydney for a few weeks.

But when Kidman finally jetted into Kununurra’s tiny airstrip, she was thrilled by the warm welcome.

A number of town residents, including schoolgirls with posies of flowers, were on hand to greet her.

“She was completely surprised,” an insider close to Kidman said. “She wasn’t expecting anything, but there were a number of fans at the airport.”

The crowd was back out in force for Jackman, who arrived after Kidman.

Sydney Morning Herald

Being an Australian myself, I’m looking forward to this new Baz Lurhmann film. He’s the guy who cast Claire Danes and Leonardo DeCaprio in Romeo and Juliet, and made Moulin Rouge. I don’t know if Australia is going to be the same kind of thing, but then again, I’ve never gone anywhere near an outback cattle station and I didn’t come from a family of farmers. To me, living in Australia is actually kind of like the soap opera Neighbours. Which might be a more accurate portrayal of Australian suburbia, but not as compelling as drought and flood. Actually, I hope Baz puts the flood in the movie. In a time when it is illegal to wash your car or water your lawn due to drought, you’d be in trouble if you wasted all that water.

Here’s what imdb.com has to say about the plot. Don’t read anymore if you’d like to be surprised.

Luhrmann’s film is set in northern Australia prior to World War II and centers on an English aristocrat (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 (Jackman) to drive 2,000 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.

Maybe Australia was like this 40 years before I was born? Actually, sounds like a good movie, but not likely to have any of Baz Luhrmann’s signature musical numbers in it.

Picture note by Celebitchy: Header image of Nicole and Hugh on set on 5/24/07 thanks to Splash News.