Australian megastar Chris Hemsworth has delighted kids at a remote school, swooping in by helicopter for a surprise visit.

Hemsworth, 40, was mobbed by the children at the remote Wugularr School when he landed on Thursday morning.

Photographs shared to social media by the school, which is in Beswick, east of Katherine in the Northern Territory, showed the Hollywood star surrounded by smiling youngsters.

“What an exciting morning we have had in Beswick,” the school wrote on Facebook.

“The whole community saw him land on the oval in a helicopter and then he spent the next 30 mins saying hello and getting photos. So exciting to see a movie star in our little community.”

Hemsworth was on his way to the NT town of Bulman, apparently to film the second season of his documentary Limitless. The Hemsworth family lived in the town, which is 600 kilometres south of Darwin, when he was a child.

“My earliest memories were on the cattle stations up in the Outback, and then we moved back to Melbourne and then back out there and then back again,” the Hollywood megastar has said.

Season one of Limitless featured Hemsworth getting well outside his comfort zone as he tried to battle illnesses and problems related to ageing. It was during filming of the documentary that he discovered through genetic testing that he is eight to 10 times more likely than the average person to develop Alzheimer’s disease, a form of dementia.

“The idea that I won’t be able to remember the life I experienced, or my wife, my kids, is probably my biggest fear,” Hemsworth said in the episode in which the test results were revealed.

“The positive of it was like: ‘Right, if I didn’t know this information, I wouldn’t have made the changes I made’.”

He has since detailed several lifestyle changes in response to the diagnosis.

“If you look at Alzheimer’s prevention, the benefit of preventative steps is that it affects the rest of your life. When you have predisposition to cardiovascular heart disease, cancer, anything – it’s all about sleep management, stress management, nutrition, movement, fitness. It’s all kind of the same tools that need to be applied in a consistent way,” he has said.

Hemsworth and wife Elsa Pataky share daughter India and twins Sasha and Tristan.