If there's no smoke then it may quite possibly be a lack of fuel and if that's your gut feeling, let's start there.
Fuel is drawn from the tank by the pump on the engine - there's no lift pump (normally). This means that the entire fuel connection from pump to filter to tank is a low-pressure system that won't show leaks very easily.
It's possible that you've got something blocking the fuel pickup in the tank, it could be a bad batch of fuel or it could be algae or even waxing (unwinterised diesel can start forming wax in cold weather). The thing about waxing (or gelling) is that once the temperature of the fuel rises again, the wax/gel is supposed to dissolve again. This gives us another possible clue.
If your car is only doing this when the ambient temperature is below 1C (for Victoria, diesel fuel in August is supposed to have a maximum cloud point of 1), you might try adding something like "Diesel Winter Rescue". Here on the farms they use kerosene (which is what I use for my caravan's diesel heater) at the rate of about 10% - I don't know that I'd go that high in a common rail engine, given the pump's tolerances and that kerosene doesn't lubricate as well as diesel.
If it's doing it when the ambient temperature is warm(ish, say 10C or more) then you may have some algae in the tank. You can try a biocide like this one from Repco:
https://www.repco.com.au/oils-fluid...de-fuel-treatment-1l-addsltreat001/p/A9727484
and it should help considerably (note: that 1L bottle treats 2,000 litres of fuel so you won't need much).
Otherwise, if it's not algae or wax/gel, you may have a very minor leak that doesn't present itself until the system is under load causing it to suck air. Because of the way the fuel system works, this won't be easy to find but you could try overpriming (about 20-30 squeezes of the primer bulb) and hunt down the leak.
