Such were the times that a lead story on this day in 1953 involved a UK politician visiting Canberra to discuss nuclear weapons testing at Woomera.
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As well as discussing logistics, like when the next test would happen and whether media would be allowed to observe, Duncan Sandys faced some pressure from his Australian counterparts about the heavy costs of staging the tests. He acknowledged Australia was shouldering a cost that other members of the Commonwealth were not.
Meanwhile extracts from a US newspaper report about how Australia was "robbing the cradle" to develop tennis stars made their way onto the page .
The New York World Telegram wrote a part-critical, part-complimentary piece about the generation of Aussie tennis stars that was being turned out of a system that treated "amateurism as a joke".
"Take a kid of 15 out of school, put him on the payroll of a sporting goods firm and make him play tennis 12 months of the year under expert coaching," the piece said.
"The answer is easy. Your country wins the Davis Cup and the majority of the world's tennis tournaments."
Whether the criticism was fair or not, the US more than made up for any lack of professionalism in its sporting programs over the years.
