Australians bewitched by Nicole's wedding

Jun 24, 2006, 18:13 GMT

Australian actress Nicole Kidman leaves her parents\' house in Sydney, Saturday 24 June 2006. Kidman is in Australia preparing for her wedding to country music singer Keith Urban this weekend. EPA/TRACEY NEARMY

Sydney - Australian radio stations are gearing up for this weekend's Sydney wedding of actor Nicole Kidman and singer Keith Urban by playing the country crooner's hit Who Wouldn't Wanna Be Me?

It's a ballad about the simple pleasure that an out-of-work young man with no money in his pockets finds in driving the back road of the Deep South with his woman and his guitar by his side.

Urban's pauper days are long gone. This week in Sydney's flashiest waterside suburb he was behind the leather-clad wheel of an Aston-Martin being pursued by paparazzi. Beside him was one of the world's richest and most beautiful women.

They were racing between the million-dollar mansion she owns and the million-dollar harbour-view apartment that last month they bought together.

'I think they make a fantastic couple,' said gossip columnist Ros Reines. 'I'm so thrilled she didn't marry (pop star) Lenny Kravitz because that wouldn't quite have the same glow about it because he's not Australian.'

Though he was born in New Zealand, Urban, 38, is as Australian as they come. He was brought up on a hard-scrabble farm at Caboolture, an hour's drive from Brisbane. He played a thousand gigs in pubs and clubs before he got his big break in 1990 when he won an award and a record deal. By 1992 he was in Nashville, where he's lived ever since, trying hard to break into country music's big league.

The parallels with Kidman are striking: they were born months apart, they are both slim and blonde, they left school early to try and get into show business, and in the early 1990s both moved to the United States. They have no qualifications between them - except good looks, talent and driving ambition. They work hard.

Neither has the typical bratty temperament of a big star. When the press gang besieging Kidman's Sydney mansion sang Happy Birthday (Kidman was 39 last week) through the intercom to try and get them to come out, the golden couple sent a case of beer and a nice note.

Where other celebrities have spurned all contact with the press at wedding time, the 'Kurbans' have promised the media scrum a free picture of their nuptials.

What's quintessentially Australian is that there has been hardly a word about the social distinctions.

Kidman, born in Hawaii, is used to wealth and position. Her father is an eminent psychiatrist. She went to a top private school and took classes at a top private drama school. Even her sister lives in a million-dollar mansion.

Urban is from society's bottom-drawer, the son of regular folk a world away from Sydney's swish north shore and its harbour-view houses and metropolitan graces.

The family flew from Brisbane to Sydney on a discount carrier. Beside giant screens set up in Sydney's Circular Quay, the Urbans mingled with the masses watching Australia qualify for the next round of football's World Cup.

The Kurbans: their ambition and drive unites them. What sets them apart is that there have been no setbacks for Kidman since she got a break at the age of 14 in the film BMX Bandits. At 23, she was married to Hollywood-heartthrob Tom Cruise and settled into a life of luxury and acclaim. The marriage ended in 2001.

For Urban, life has had its low points. For much of the 1990s, by his own admission, he struggled with drugs and alcohol. Life didn't look up until he was 37 and released the best-selling album Be Here.

Since then, he's had every reason to sing a song about a bloke counting his blessings. He was voted top male vocalist by the Academy of Country Music Awards. He was named country music's sexiest man. He made a splash showing off his lean good looks as a model for a clothes store chain.

Then he got set to marry a woman many have claimed to be among the most desirable on the planet.