THE Aboriginal boy who stars with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman in the movie Australia will be our next leading man, according to director Baz Luhrmann.

12-year-old Brandon Walters, plucked from obscurity by Luhrmann to appear in one of the country's most anticipated films, also stars in the new Tourism Australia advertising campaign.

He encourages visitors to Australia to lose themselves in our wide, brown land, saying "sometimes we gotta go walkabout".

"Paul Hogan was our last leading man," Luhrmann said.

"Our next leading man is about four-foot (1.2m) high, (with) long, sort of gold hair, and is an Aboriginal boy."

Luhrmann has produced two mini-movies that show international visitors being transformed by the country when they visit Australia.

"So when Tourism Australia came to me and they said, 'We're trying to tell the world why you should fly over a lot of beaches to come to ours', that really got me thinking," Luhrmann said. "What if you didn't make an ad but you could see little movies, like little movie trailers, not about what's here but about the people that we want to come here?"

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