By Phil Mercer BBC News, Sydney

Some 500,000 tickets have been sold for Kylie's Australian tour

Kylie Minogue's breast cancer has made the headlines across her native Australia.

"Australia's biggest international pop star Kylie Minogue is facing her greatest challenge," is how the Seven Network in Sydney told its viewers of the shock diagnosis.

"It is the sort of news that stuns a nation," reported the ABC, Australia's national broadcaster.

Commercial TV heavyweight Channel Nine said the whole country would be "absolutely shell-shocked".

Nine's entertainment reporter, Richard Wilkins, told a prime-time audience that Kylie would need to draw on all her well-known resilience.

"She's an absolute fighter," said Wilkins. "She has fought every inch of the way to achieve what she has got today and surely this will be her greatest challenge."

Family time

The 36-year-old singer and actor arrived in her home town of Melbourne at the weekend ahead of a marathon 20-date tour around Australia.

She was due to take part in a full dress rehearsal in Sydney on Wednesday before the start of the spectacular Showgirl tour the following day.

I'm hoping and praying because the doctor found it [the cancer] so early that everything will be okay Michael Gudinski Kylie Minogue's promoter

Kylie will turn 37 at the end of this month and is to have immediate treatment.

Her promoter Michael Gudinski said the cancer was diagnosed on Tuesday morning.

"It's time for her to be at home with her family and I think you'll find she'll be in hospital in the next couple of days," he told reporters.

"I'm hoping and praying because the doctor found it [the cancer] so early that everything will be okay," Gudinski explained to the Seven Network.

Chances 'good'

Australian music commentator Ian "Molly" Meldrum was clearly upset at Kylie's predicament. "I can't comprehend this you know. I simply cannot comprehend this," he told the ABC.

There were sympathetic words too for the singer's family. "Her mum and dad, Ron and Carol, her brother Brendon and of course Dannii... will get through this. I know they will get through this," an emotional Meldrum said.

Colleagues say Kylie is a fighter who will rise to the challenge

Kylie was not the first Aussie singing star to fall victim to cancer, he added. "...way back it was Olivia (Newton-John), then of course Delta (Goodrem) with (Hodgkin's lymphoma) and now Kylie."

The Seven Network said Minogue's cancer had "not spread beyond the breast" and that "typical treatment involves an operation to remove the tumour followed by either radio or chemotherapy".

It insisted "her chances of pulling through are good".

Music promoter and manager Glenn Wheatley told Melbourne newspaper the Herald Sun that he felt "numb" after hearing the announcement that one of Australia's most successful artists had breast cancer.

"Like everybody, you fall in love with her," Wheatley told the popular tabloid.

Wait and worry

He worked alongside Kylie when she performed for Australian troops in East Timor in 1999 alongside Aussie singing legend John Farnham.

"I don't know her intimately but professionally all I can say is that she was always a trooper and I just wish her all the best now," he said.

Those thoughts will be echoed across Australia. Last month it was reported that 500,000 tickets had been sold for Kylie Minogue's Australian tour.

It was scheduled to touch down in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth over the next month.

Instead fans will now be forced to wait and worry about what the future holds for one of Australia's greatest-ever musical exports.