Sunday Too Far Away

Sunday Too Far Away is a 1975 Australian drama film directed by Ken Hannam. It belongs to the Australian Film Renaissance or the "Australian New Wave", which occurred during that decade. The film is set on a sheep station in the Australian outback in 1955 and its action concentrates on the shearers' reactions to a threat to their bonuses and the arrival of non-union labour. Acclaimed for its understated realism of the work, camaraderie and general life of the shearer, Jack Thompson plays the knock-about Foley, a heavy drinking gun shearer (talented professional sheep shearer), and while he makes a play for the station owner's daughter Sheila (Lisa Peers), the film is a presentation of various aspects of Australian male culture and not a romance; the film's title itself is reputedly the lament of an Australian shearer's wife: "Friday night [he's] too tired; Saturday night too drunk; Sunday, too far away". Sunday Too Far Away won three 1975 Australian Film Institute awards: Best Film, Best Actor in a Leading Role and Best Actor in a Supporting Role.