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

Sunday Too Far Away, an iconic tale about male culture and loyalty in a 1950s shearing shed, was the very first big hit of Australia's golden age of cinema however Americans were particularly mystified by it, producer Matt Carroll remembers.

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

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

But French audiences were even more welcoming of the film at Cannes Directors Fortnight, thanks to the spouse of an Adelaide cars and truck dealer who had actually sold Carroll a Peugeot.

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

"I keep in mind being in the cinema and the first thing that comes up is somebody in the shearing shed states about the squatter, 'his shit does not stink'. When it was translated, the Parisian slang for that is 'he farts above his asshole'."

In the big screening space, "the entire audience simply went nuts, absolutely insane, and we got a big sale to France", Carroll laughs.

"It's the language of the bush," discusses famous Australian actor Jack Thompson, who portrayed the hard-drinking weapon shearer, Foley.

"There's a wonderful friendship revealed in that motion picture. Sunday says something a lot more profound about the Australian character than a variety of other motion pictures that analyzed our success and failures."

Thompson, who left home at 14 to work as a jackaroo in the NT, says "it was like a journal, it was just how people behaved - I keep in mind, due to the fact that as a teenager, I remained in those sheds.

"Sunday Too Far Away has a truly important part in my career and in my memory; I 'd worked on that wool press, I 'd chosen up that wool. I knew how tough it was ... it was the world of working guys."

Thompson was a star of a multitude 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 involved in Sunday Too Far Away, 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 remained in Australian shearing sheds. So when we required to find a shearing shed, I knew exactly where they were," he says.

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

Thompson and Carroll just recently visited 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 a crucial beacon in the growth of the Australian movie industry," says Thompson.

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

The New york city Times described Australian New Wave as "capturing a moment of liberty and abundance that was over practically before we understood it" and "having a vigor, a love of open space and a tendency for unexpected 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 was like "riding the crest of a wave, it was spectacular", says Thompson.
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"There was undoubtedly a really concentrated vitality, a distinct charm, unlike anything else at the time."

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

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

"We never ever had another period like that, with the ingenuity and the imagination."

The SAFC's 2nd function, the enigmatic and menacing Picnic at Hanging Rock, which also turns 50 this year, ended up being an icon of Australian movie theater.

"The excellent thing that happened after that is that Margaret Fink made My Brilliant Career, and the Americans understood it," states Carroll.

"And After That Breaker Morant occurred and they clicked with it and it had huge outcomes, and after that the 2nd Mad Max was a huge hit. So those 3 films were essential to opening up the American market."

Thompson keeps in mind that Australia made the world's first feature-length narrative motion picture, The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906, "and we had a vital Australian movie market in the silent period as much as 1927".

"Hollywood and the American financial investment in theatre chains here was able to control the Australian movie industry, and essentially, between 1930 and the 70s, absolutely nothing much taken place in Australian movie theater," he states.

While Sunday Too Far Away was New Wave's very first industrial success, 1971's Wake In Fright is widely considered as the period's opening movie.

It was Thompson's very first movie and the last for experienced character star Chips Rafferty, who passed away of a heart attack before it was launched.

It screened at Cannes and got 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 gaming spree leaves him broke. Amid a haze of alcohol, he gets involved in a gruesome kangaroo hunt and is also subjected to moral destruction.

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

"Because when we were seen on screen (formerly), we were viewed as these pleasant caricatures, we weren't used to seeing it and we didn't wish to see it," he says.

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