Image from Wired.com How well I remember those salad days when a rumour went around that disgraced former US president Richard Milhous Nixon was likely to make a formal visit to Australia.
Long before the Internet and instantaneous communication, on a rural exchange where you could still 'phone in your telegrams, I fired off a stern word or two to then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser telling him that in my opinion Nixon should not be allowed into the country in any capacity.
I eventually received a letter in reply (marred by the fact that the Prime Minister assumed that he was writing to one of the men in the family) which was carefully diplomatic about the possibility that Nixon might visit and, if memory serves me correctly, pointed out that his government was not in the business of barring people from visiting Australia.
Cabinet papers released this week show that behind the scenes, the Fraser Cabinet was working hard on 22 August 1978 to make sure Tricky Dicky did not publicly express a desire to visit down under and that he stayed well away from our shores.
See digital copy of the cabinet minute here.
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