Since his eye-catching 1992 debut, the ugly duckling fairy-tale Strictly Ballroom, Australian writer/director Baz Luhrmann has left us in a swoon with beautifully crafted stories of romance across the social and cultural divide.

His daring reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes married dazzling spectacle with devastating emotion, qualities echoed in the Oscar nominated musical Moulin Rouge.

Now, the master filmmaker works his magic on his biggest canvas yet, paying tribute to his homeland with a sprawling love story set during the years before the Japanese bombing of Darwin.

Australia is a sweeping, old-fashioned epic that marries Catherine Martin’s ravishing production design with Mandy Walker’s breathtaking cinematography - a shoe-in for the Oscar.

Split loosely into three, tonally distinct chapters (comedy, romance, action), the film casts a heady glow for well over two-and-a-half hours as Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman generate enough sexual tension to melt the celluloid.

Lady Sarah Ashley (Kidman) leaves behind the finery of the English aristocracy to travel to the Australian outback and confront her husband Lord Ashley on the Faraway Downs cattle station, where he spends most of his time.

She finds her husband dead and a huge property in financial disarray, on the brink of takeover by scheming King Carney (Bryan Brown), who controls most of the local cattle market.

With the help of a swarthy drover (Jackman), Sarah decides to challenge Carney’s monopoly by herding 500-strong of prize cattle all the way to port in the face of stiff resistance from her rival’s right-hand man and heir apparent, Neil Fletcher (David Wenham).

En route, Sarah and the drover fall passionately in love, becoming surrogate parents to an orphaned Aborigine boy, Nullah (Brandon Walters), who must find himself on walkabout with his shaman grandfather King George (David Gulpilil).

As Neil resorts to increasingly drastic measures to scupper Sarah’s bid to reach Darwin in time, even cold-blooded murder, the Japanese prepare to bomb the bustling port city; a blitzkrieg that will test the lovers to the limit and potentially separate them forever.

Australia is a gloriously seductive treat of supreme ambition and artistry.

Fans of the buff leading man may need a cold compress before the first hour is up as Jackman’s rugged man of the earth enjoys a gratuitous shower in the outback, water and suds cascading over his tanned, muscular frame from multiple angles and in slow motion.

Kidman has never looked more radiant, demonstrating perfect comic timing as her noblewoman drinks in the sights and sounds of a country at odds with its Aborigine population.

Pacing slackens perhaps as Japanese bombers descend on Darwin but by then, we’re mesmerised, relishing the screenplay’s myriad cute nods (both verbal and visual) to The Wizard Of Oz.

And Luhrmann is the magician who has us completely under his spell.