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

Sunday Too Far, a renowned tale about male culture and loyalty in a 1950s shearing shed, was the first huge hit of Australia's golden age of cinema however Americans were specifically dumbfounded by it, manufacturer Matt Carroll remembers.

"They recognised that Sunday was a terrific 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 as well have had it in Dutch."

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

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

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

In the substantial screening room, "the entire audience simply went bananas, definitely insane, and we got a substantial sale to France", Carroll chuckles.

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

"There's a wonderful friendship revealed because movie. Sunday says something much more profound about the Australian character than a number of other motion pictures that examined our triumphes and failures."

Thompson, who left home at 14 to work as a jackaroo in the NT, says "it resembled a diary, it was just how people behaved - I remember, since as a teenager, I remained in those sheds.

"Sunday Too Far Away has a truly vital part in my career and in my memory; I 'd dealt with that wool press, I 'd picked up that wool. I knew how tough it was ... it was the world of working men."

Thompson was a star of a multitude of other New age films, consisting of Breaker Morant, Mad Dog Morgan, The Club and The Man From Snowy River.

Carroll recalls also feeling well certified to be associated with Sunday Too Far, which was filmed at Carriewerloo Station, near Port Augusta, and Quorn.

"I matured on a sheep residential or commercial property so I found out how to class wool. My honours thesis remained in Australian shearing sheds. So when we needed to find a shearing shed, I understood 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 existed when the director said, 'I don't understand where we're going to discover shearers from'. And I said, 'Well, I know'.

Thompson and Carroll recently went to Adelaide for a 50th anniversary screening of Sunday Too Far Away, staged by SA Film Corporation, which played a key role in the period.

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

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

The New York Times described Australian New Wave as "recording a minute of flexibility and abundance that was over practically before we knew it" and "possessing a vitality, a love of open space and a tendency for unexpected violence and languorous sexuality".

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

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

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

"There was certainly an extremely focused vitality, a distinct appeal, unlike anything else at the time."

Carroll, who also produced Breaker Morant and Storm Boy for SAFC, states the 1970s was a remarkable duration for Australian films.

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

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

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

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

"And After That Breaker Morant occurred and they clicked with it and it had big outcomes, and then the second Mad Max was a huge hit. So those three films were key to opening up the American market."

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

"Hollywood and the American financial investment in theatre chains here had the ability to dominate the Australian film industry, and basically, in between 1930 and the 70s, nothing much happened in Australian cinema," he states.

While Sunday Too Far was New Wave's very first business success, 1971's Wake In Fright is commonly considered as the age's opening movie.

It was Thompson's first film and the last for seasoned character actor Chips Rafferty, who died of a cardiac arrest before it was released.

It screened at Cannes and received beneficial actions in France and the UK however struggled at the Australian ticket office.

It's the story of an instructor waylaid in a mining town where a gambling spree leaves him broke. Amid a haze of alcohol, he gets involved in a gruesome kangaroo hunt and is also subjected to moral deterioration.

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

"Because when we were seen on screen (formerly), we were seen as these enjoyable caricatures, we weren't utilized to seeing it and we didn't wish to see it," he states.

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