SINCE it is a work of fiction, you can invent an airliner with just enough range and have it have starters like the old canberra bomber. A cartridge starterblows enough air to spin the engine.
you could easily do something like steal a battery from on e plane and put it in another to start the apu. once you have the apu going you might start using regular methods
you might even have to push the fuel trucks up to the planes and OVER WING FUEL using sort of a bucket brigade (it would take forever).
but if you are a writer, you can make it up, its only a book.
by the way, very few planes can make it non stop from USA to australia...why not really make it a great book and have your hero get to DAYTON USAF museum and take out the old B36 bomber or even the XB70...it is a fiction work, right?
here is an image of a POS venom using the cartrdige starter system:
http://www.classicairforce.com/uploa...tart-small.jpg