When New age movies burst on to world cinema screens in the 1970s, sceptical audiences were at first baffled by the broad accents and strange colloquialisms.
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Sunday Too Far, a renowned tale about male culture and commitment in a 1950s shearing shed, was the very first huge hit of Australia's golden period of cinema however Americans were specifically mystified by it, manufacturer Matt Carroll remembers.

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

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

But French audiences were even more welcoming of the movie at Cannes Directors Fortnight, thanks to the other half of an Adelaide automobile dealership who had actually sold Carroll a Peugeot.

"She said, '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 cinema and the first thing that turns up is somebody in the shearing shed says 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 substantial screening room, "the entire audience simply went nuts, definitely crazy, and we got a substantial sale to France", Carroll chuckles.

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

"There's a terrific camaraderie revealed in that motion picture. Sunday says something a lot more extensive about the Australian character than a variety of other motion pictures that examined 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 just how individuals behaved - I remember, because as a teenager, I was in those sheds.

"Sunday Too Far Away has an actually vital part in my career and in my memory