When Australian New age movies 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, a renowned tale about male culture and loyalty in a 1950s shearing shed, was the first huge hit of Australia's golden era of movie theater however Americans were specifically perplexed by it, manufacturer Matt Carroll keeps in mind.

"They recognised that Sunday was a fantastic film however they didn't understand it," he says.

"It was pretty incomprehensible to anyone who wasn't an Australian. At American screenings, you may too 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 car dealer who had actually sold Carroll a Peugeot.

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

"I keep in mind being in the cinema and the first thing that shows up is somebody 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 entire audience simply went insane, definitely crazy, and we got a substantial sale to France", Carroll laughs.

"It's the language of the bush," discusses legendary Australian star Jack Thompson, who represented the hard-drinking weapon shearer, Foley.

"There's a wonderful friendship expressed because film. Sunday states something far more profound about the Australian character than a number of other movies that examined our triumphes and failures."

Thompson, who left home at 14 to work as a jackaroo in the NT, states "it resembled a diary, it was just how individuals behaved - I keep in mind, because as a teen, I was in those sheds.

"Sunday Too Far Away has a really vital part in my profession and in my memory; I 'd worked on that wool press, I 'd selected up that wool. I understood how tough it was ... it was the world of working men."

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

Carroll remembers likewise feeling well qualified to be associated with Sunday Too Far Away, which was shot 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 needed to discover a shearing shed, I understood precisely where they were," he says.

"And Jack and I were sharing a home together, and I understood that he was a shearer, and I was there when the director said, 'I do not understand 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, staged by SA Film Corporation, which played a key function in the era.

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

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

The New York Times explained Australian New age as "capturing a minute of flexibility and abundance that was over practically before we understood it" and "having a vitality, a love of open area 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", states Thompson.

"There was indeed a really concentrated vigor, a special beauty, unlike anything else at the time."

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

"More than 220 films, that's more than 20 movies a year. And when you read the titles, it's just incredible," he states.

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

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

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

"And then Breaker Morant came along and they clicked with it and it had huge outcomes, and after that the 2nd Mad Max was a huge hit. So those three films were crucial to opening up the American market."

Thompson notes that Australia made the world's very first feature-length narrative motion picture, The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906, "and we had a crucial Australian movie industry in the quiet era up to 1927".

"Hollywood and the American financial investment in theatre chains here was able to dominate the Australian film market, and basically, between 1930 and the 70s, absolutely nothing much taken place in Australian cinema," he says.

While Sunday Too Far Away was New Wave's first industrial success, 1971's Wake In Fright is widely considered the era'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 released.

It evaluated at Cannes and got favourable actions in France and the UK but struggled at the Australian ticket office.

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

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

"Because when we were seen on screen (previously), we were seen as these pleasant caricatures, we weren't used to seeing it and we didn't want 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 notoriously shouted back "take a seat, mate. It is us".