The best movies that make us want to travel Australia

This film is set in the incredibly remote northern New South Wales town of Lightning Ridge, near the Queensland border, and there's a surreal and mesmerising pull to this crumbling old mining community. Once famed for its vast deposit of glimmering black opals that seem to have rainbows captured within them, it's now pretty run down. As captured by Melbourne-based, Russian-born director Alena Lodkina and her cinematographer Michael Latham, there's an alluring beauty to its Mad Max-like decay that makes us want to explore its dusty expanses and buried treasures.

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PSA: Do not try and upstage a drag queen if you value your life and your dignity. Unless, of course, you're the majestic Simpson Desert. Tracing some of Australia's most jaw-dropping scenery, from the Sydney Harbour Bridge to Alice Springs via a thoroughly wonky route taking in Coober Pedy, Broken Hill and King's Canyon, this packs the wow. Stephan Elliott's camp fantastic may have its wobbly moments, but it remains a queer touchstone. Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce and Terence Stamp are the drag queens in question, and Lizzy Gardiner and Tim Chappel won Oscars for their outré costumes. But it really is the outstanding outback that steals the show.

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From Adelaide to the Tiwi Islands, the lush majesty of Australia is front and centre in this thoroughly lovely rom com of errors. The ever-fabulous Miranda Tapsell both wrote and stars in this soul-soother, playing a hectically busy lawyer who decides to marry her hunky boyfriend (Gwilym Lee, Bohemian Rhapsody) on the spur of the moment. Tapsell's character heads to Darwin to meet her mum (the legendary Ursula Yovich), but her mum is nowhere to be found, kicking off a frantic road trip across the NT. Your peepers are in for a treat.

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Never has a film made us so desperately long to get utterly and completely lost as Peter Weir's dreamily erotic take on Joan Lindsay's Victoria-set mystery novel Picnic at Hanging Rock. Depicting the disappearance of schoolgirls and their teacher while exploring the rocky crevasses of this ancient volcanic marvel, it's super spooky. The tree-shrouded rock is absolutely a character in its own right, a ridiculously beautiful setting to the north of Mount Macedon, some 70km drive from Melbourne. The site was wrested violently from its traditional Aboriginal owners, and the sense of something much greater reclaiming a wrong and righting it is overwhelming. And while Lindsay's novel was fiction, something beautiful and terrifying in equal measure has been willed into our existence. Many folks swear it's fact. 

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Take in those dreamy Blue Mountains views in this steamy 1930s period piece, which stars Kiwi Sam Neill as polyamorous Australian artist Norman Lindsay and Pamela Rabe as his savvy business manager, model and wife, Rose. Helmed by Flirting director John Duigan, the sumptuous period piece film is also notable for Elle Macpherson’s acting debut, appearing as one of their multiple, errr, muses. Hugh Grant and Tara Fitzgerald are also fun as an Anglican priest and his discombobulated wife, who are so not ready for what they witness. Cheeky fun and easy on the eye, it really shows off the lush surrounds.

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Melbourne's thriving, multicultural inner-northern streets get the VIP treatment in this darkly comic '90s gem, also starring Sam Neill. He plays a heavy-drinking, leather jacket-wearing nightclub cook who only has eyes for Doctor Doctor star Zoe Carides’ barmaid. Unfortunately, his best intentions get waylaid when he's implicated in a murder and gets caught up in a turf war between rival Greek and Turkish gangs. If that sounds daaaaark, trust us, things go hilariously awry from there. Director John Ruane’s likeably offbeat and refreshingly working-class adaptation of Boyd Oxlade’s hit novel is a treat, and a great way to see Melbourne while most of Australia can't go there. 

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We absolutely love Neighbours alumna Radha Mitchell as an opera singer gone to seed in this stunner from director Ben Hackworth. But as grand as she is, it's arguable that the backdrop's just as starry. She haunts the tropical loopiness of Queensland’s surreal Paronella Park like Miss Havisham, but dealing with humidity. We so want to explore the croc-infested paradise lost where this steamy melodrama unfolds. The film zooms in on the long shadow of a family tragedy that intrigues, teasing forbidden love between Mitchell and the easy-on-the-eye Thomas Cocquerel, with Odessa Young (Shirley) in the mix for good measure.

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There's a technicoloured glow to The Sapphires that director Wayne Blair and cinematographer Warwick Thornton say pays its dues to The Color Purple. It rousingly follows the true story of four Aboriginal women – played by Jessica Mauboy, Deborah Mailman, Miranda Tapsell and Shari Sebbens - who soared to stardom on the back of their magnificent voices. As managed by Chris O'Dowd (Bridesmaids), they head to Vietnam to entertain the US troops during the war while coming to terms with the effect of the Stolen Generations on their own families. Sure, Ho Chi Minh City looks amazing, but there are also lush scenes shot on the Murray River in Albury, on the NSW/Victoria border, that make us want to dive on in.

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In the neon-soaked golden days of Kings Cross, a fashionably greasy Heath Ledger plays 19-year-old Jimmy. He's in love with Alex, a sweet young Rose Byrne, and pursued by Bryan Brown as terrifyingly blokey gangster Pando. Complete with a nostalgia-inducing Powderfinger-heavy soundtrack, this 1999 film is a real love letter to the Sydney underground at its most gritty and dangerous. Bondi Beach also makes a starring cameo, with the sun-dappled water enticing Jimmy for a fateful dip in the briny deep.

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Of course vast swathes of Australian filmmaker Garth Davis' lost kid odyssey Lion take place in India. Five-year-old Saroo (Sunny Pawar) gets on train near his home in Buhanpur and winds up on the mean streets of Kolkata some 1,600km away, expecting never to see his family again in this heart-tugging biopic. But the movie also shows off some pretty stunning Tasmanian scenery, after he's adopted by Aussie couple Sue and John Brierley (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham). Glowing up into the dreamy Dev Patel, Saroo winds up dating Rooney Mara's Lucy. We get to see the Apple Isle through their moonstruck eyes. That includes lush shots of Mount Wellington, Cape Huay, Bruny Island and Recherche Bay, as well as capital Hobart. 

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The Brits are invading. First, it was Patel in Lion, now it's Kate Winslet in director Jocelyn Moorhouse's The Dressmaker. But when they're both (a) awesome and (b) surprisingly good at the accent, who can begrudge them? Winslet is cast beside the towering Judy Davis and hubba Liam Hemsworth, with Hugo Weaving thrown in for good measure, and we're sold. The film is based on the novel by Rosalie Ham, and Moorhouse describes it as "Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven with a sewing machine." Winslet plays a fashion designer who returns home to the fictional town of Dungatar aiming to exact vengeance on those who wronged her in the past. The dinky Victorian towns of Little River and Horsham stand in. You can also catch a glimpse of Melbourne's beautiful Art Deco picture house the Yarraville Sun. 

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Ivan Sen's bush noir Mystery Road is shot in and around the sheep and cattle outback town of Winton in Queensland. It takes elements of classic Westerns and fuses them with a crime thriller's bite. Aaron Pedersen is inspired casting as grizzled lone ranger Detective Jay Swan, who drives into town dragging his demons behind him while hoping to solve the unexplained murder of an Indigenous girl. Is the local cop, played by True Blood's Ryan Kwanten, friend or foe? The ubiquitous Hugo Weaving pops up once more, and Uncle jack Charles steals the show. But it's the vast red rock tearing at impossibly clear skies that hooks us into this whodunit. 

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Despite being the nation's capital, Canberra does not pop up much in Australian cinema. Maybe that has something to do with it (and, indeed, the ACT) being a made-up place conceived purely to stop Melbourne and Sydney duking it out? Who can say? Still, director Cate Shortland (whose Black Widow is stuck in limbo) does manage to make it work cinematically in the sensuous, sun-dappled Somersault. Granted, Abbie Cornish totes runs away to play with Sam Worthington in the snowfields of much prettier Jindabyne, across the NSW border, but close enough. A contemporary Australian classic that shows off a side of the country less well seen. 

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Hero to some, outlaw to others, Ned Kelly (George MacKay) casts a long shadow over Australian history. While the truth most likely lies somewhere in the middle, local filmmaker Justin Kurzel (Snowtown, Macbeth) cuts through our messy mythology to deliver a visceral, sweat-soaked nightmare of 'destiny' undone. Adapted from the Peter Carey novel, iand also tapping Nicholas Hoult, Russell Crowe and a scene-stealing Essie Davis as the fearsome Kelly matriarch, with the fractured love story between a mother and son the film's raw, beating heart. You'll also enjoy a jaw-dropping look at the Winton Wetlands, as well as a peep inside the old Melbouren Gaol.

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OK, OK so impending apocalypse is a less than relaxing holiday prep vibe. But... local director Zak Hilditch does pull off some pretty jaw-dropping shots of a deserted Perth and surrounding pristine beaches in this end-of-everything disaster movie. Starring Nathan Phillips (Wolf Creek) and Angourie Rice (Ladies in Black), the film works as a contemporary update on Neville Shute’s novel On the Beach. The rest of the world is already gone, so what would you do if you only had 12 hours left to live? It features spectacularly screw loose cameos by Sarah Snook (Succession, The Dressmaker) and Daniel Henshall (Snowtown, Acute Misfortune). If you can get past the doom and gloom, the abandoned streets do have a seriously cool 28 Days Later look, which Hilditch says was pretty easy to shoot on a Sunday in WA. Worth remembering if you're looking for a chilled escape.   

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If you want your coastal WA vistas with less disaster is upon us and a lot more surf's up bliss, you could do worse than resort to one of the roughly 80 zillion Tim Winton adaptations out there. Breath is the feature debut of writer, director and much-loved star Simon Baker. It also features Guardians of the Galaxy alumna Elizabeth Debicki. The latter doesn't get anywhere near enough to do here, and you can pretty much guess the wounded masculinity schtick will be laid on thick, but wowee does the roiling sea cinematography sing. Baker finds an analogy for Winton’s poetic prose in the ocean’s undulations and the silent sanctuary below. Capturing awe-inspiring surfing footage, it makes us want to book a trip to the southern WA town of Denmark ASAP. 

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