When Australian New Wave films burst on to world cinema screens in the 1970s, sceptical audiences were initially baffled by the broad accents and peculiar colloquialisms.

Sunday Too Far Away, an iconic tale about male culture and loyalty in a 1950s shearing shed, was the very first huge hit of Australia's golden era of movie theater but Americans were specifically perplexed by it, manufacturer Matt Carroll keeps in mind.

"They identified that Sunday was an excellent movie but they didn't understand it," he says.

"It was quite incomprehensible to anyone who wasn't an Australian. At American screenings, you might as well have had it in Dutch."

But French audiences were much more welcoming of the film at Cannes Directors Fortnight, thanks to the other half of an Adelaide vehicle dealer who 'd offered Carroll a Peugeot.

"She said, 'oh yes darling, I understand Parisian street slang, I'll translate it all for you (into subtitles)'," Carroll continues.

"I remember sitting in the cinema and the very first thing that turns up is someone in the shearing shed states about the squatter, 'his shit doesn't stink'. When it was translated, the Parisian slang for that is 'he farts above his asshole'."

In the huge screening room, "the whole audience just went nuts, definitely crazy, and we got a substantial sale to France", Carroll laughs.

"It's the language of the bush," explains famous Australian actor Jack Thompson, who depicted the hard-drinking gun shearer, Foley.

"There's a terrific friendship expressed because film. Sunday states something far more profound about the Australian character than a variety of other films that analyzed our victories and failures."

Thompson, who left home at 14 to work as a jackaroo in the NT, says "it resembled a journal, it was simply how people acted - I remember, due to the fact that as a teenager, I was in those sheds.

"Sunday Too Far has an actually vital part in my profession and in my memory; I 'd worked on that wool press, I 'd gotten that wool. I knew how difficult it was ... it was the world of working guys."

Thompson was a star of a slew of other New Wave motion pictures, including Breaker Morant, Mad Dog Morgan, The Club and The Man From Snowy River.

Carroll recalls likewise feeling well qualified to be included in Sunday Too Far, which was filmed at Carriewerloo Station, near Port Augusta, and Quorn.

"I grew up on a sheep residential or commercial property so I learned how to class wool. My honours thesis was in Australian shearing sheds. So when we required to discover a shearing shed, I knew precisely where they were," he says.

"And Jack and I were sharing a house together, and I knew that he was a shearer, and I was there when the director said, 'I do not know where we're going to find shearers from'. And I stated, 'Well, I understand'.

Thompson and Carroll recently checked out Adelaide for a 50th anniversary screening of Sunday Too Far Away, staged by SA Film Corporation, which played a key function in the age.

"The SAFC was an important beacon in the growth of the Australian movie market," states Thompson.

"Tale after tale essential to our understanding of ourselves was told and financed by that entity."

The New York Times explained Australian New age as "catching a minute of liberty and abundance that was over nearly before we knew it" and "having a vitality, a love of open space and a propensity for sudden violence and languorous sexuality".

"That's me," says Thompson, now aged 84, deadpan.

"Used to be, mate," laughs Carroll, 80.

As a young star, it resembled "riding the crest of a wave, it was spectacular", says Thompson.

"There was certainly an extremely concentrated vigor, a distinct beauty, unlike anything else at the time."

Carroll, who also produced Breaker Morant and Storm Boy for SAFC, says the 1970s was a remarkable period for Australian movies.

"More than 220 movies, that's more than 20 movies a year. And when you check out the titles, it's simply incredible," he says.

"We never ever had another duration like that, with the inventiveness and the creativity."

The SAFC's second function, the enigmatic and enormous Picnic at Hanging Rock, which also turns 50 this year, ended up being an icon of Australian movie theater.

"The great thing that took place after that is that Margaret Fink made My Brilliant Career, and the Americans comprehended it," says Carroll.

"And After That Breaker Morant came along and they clicked with it and it had big results, and then the second Mad Max was a giant hit. So those three films were crucial to opening up the American market."

Thompson keeps in mind that Australia made the world's first feature-length narrative film, The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906, "and we had an important Australian film industry in the quiet period up to 1927".

"Hollywood and the American financial investment in theatre chains here was able to dominate the Australian movie industry, and basically, in between 1930 and the 70s, nothing much occurred in Australian movie theater," he states.

While Sunday Too Far was New age's very first industrial success, 1971's Wake In Fright is extensively considered as the period's opening film.

It was Thompson's first motion picture and the last for seasoned character star Chips Rafferty, who passed away of a cardiac arrest before it was released.

It screened at Cannes and received favourable actions in France and the UK however had a hard time at the Australian box workplace.

It's the story of a teacher waylaid in a mining town where a betting spree leaves him broke. Amid a haze of alcohol, he takes part in a gruesome kangaroo hunt and is likewise subjected to ethical degradation.

It ran for just 10 days in Sydney, and 14 in Melbourne, Thompson remembers, "and people were saying 'that's not us', despite the truth the book was written by an Australian".

"Because when we were seen on screen (previously), we were viewed as these pleasant caricatures, we weren't utilized to seeing it and we didn't want to see it," he states.

During an early Australian screening, when a male stood up, pointed at the screen and opposed "that's not us!", Thompson famously shouted back "take a seat, mate. It is us".