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

Sunday Too Far Away, a renowned tale about male culture and commitment in a 1950s shearing shed, was the first success of Australia's golden era of movie theater however Americans were specifically bewildered by it, manufacturer Matt Carroll remembers.

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

"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 much more welcoming of the film at Fortnight, thanks to the wife of an Adelaide car dealership who had actually sold Carroll a Peugeot.

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

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

In the huge screening space, "the whole audience simply went crazy, definitely insane, and we got a substantial sale to France", Carroll chuckles.

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

"There's a wonderful camaraderie expressed in that film. Sunday states something far more extensive about the Australian character than a number of other movies that examined our success and failures."

Thompson, who left home at 14 to work as a jackaroo in the NT, states "it was like a diary, it was simply how individuals acted - I keep in mind, due to the fact that as a teenager, I remained in those sheds.

"Sunday Too Far Away has a truly fundamental part in my career and in my memory