The Australian government's tourism arm is hoping Baz Luhrmann's new film "Australia" will do more than prompt folks to down a few Foster's lagers and toss a few shrimp on the barbie: The board teamed with the director to create a a full-bore, international media campaign that uses some of the movie's actors, scenes and themes to create a brand indistinguishable from the movie.

Slideshow: Real Australia

"Through our marketing efforts we hope that as people get caught up in the romance and adventure of the movie that they will fall in love with the idea of holidaying in Australia," said Tourism Australia's managing director, Geoff Buckley, in kicking off the $26 million campaign.

The World War II-era romantic epic pairs Australian film stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman on a cattle drive in Australia during World War II.

Tourism is a growing industry Down Under. Buckley's group estimates that 5.2 million tourists visited Australia in 2007, up about 2 percent compared to the previous year. The international visitors accounted for 21 percent of all tourism expenditures, with domestic tourists accounting for the rest. The industry represented 3.7 percent of Australia's gross domestic product in 2007, and employed close to 500,000 people.

It's a vast country offering a broad menu to visitors, from the opera and surfing in Sydney to to the heart of the nation in its Red Center, including the UNESCO World Heritage-listed sites of Uluru and Kata Tjuta.

The movie was filmed largely in rugged western Australia, notably in and around the small town of Kununurra, a three-hour flight north of Perth, and in the California-sized Kimberley wilderness region.

Other film sites include working cattle stations at El Questro and Home Valley, the sandstone escarpments of the Cockburn Range and the striped mounds of the Bungle Bungle Range in Purnululu National Park, another Heritage site.

The movie's World War II scenes were mostly filmed in the northwest city of Darwin, where Japanese raids in 1942 and 1943 killed more than 900 people. Visitors to real-life Darwin can see a war memorial related to that attack as well as Stokes Hill Wharf, which provided the backdrop for some of the harbor scenes.

Other movie scenes set in Darwin were shot in Bowen, Queensland, a beach town north of the Whitsunday Islands. The real-life Strickland House at Vaucluse on Sydney Harbour, a historic 1850s villa and garden estate, served as the location for filming the movie's "Darwin Government House."