JUDITH GUERTIN recalls it as an otherwise unremarkable conversation between two women taking a summer class at the University of Hawaii in the 1960s.
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She and Stanley Ann Dunham were studying textile design and weaving, a subject in which Ms Dunham, an anthropologist, was majoring.
As they swapped life stories Ms Dunham remarked she had tried to visit Australia with a view to seeking an academic posting. But, she told her new friend, there were difficulties because her child was black.
Forty years later, Ms Guertin felt the deep recesses of her memory unlock as she watched Barack Obama's climb to become the first African-American president of the United States.
Prominent amid the avalanche of historical material about the future president were images of her former classmate - Mr Obama's late mother.
''I recognised Obama's kin,'' Ms Guertin said from her home in Naalehu, Hawaii.
''His kin reminded me of a young woman I met one summer during weaving class. And it turned out to be his mother.''
Ms Guertin, 66, a retired postal worker, remembers Ms Dunham as ''quite charming'' but says she did not really get to know her.
She remembers she had plans to travel to Australia and speculated it was for more than a holiday, given her degree.
''So she probably wanted to go work on a dig or study there. She would be interested in the Aborigines, I'm sure.''
Pondering what might have been, she said: ''US history might be totally different, right?''
A search of the National Archives did not produce any evidence of a visa application by Ms Dunham, but staff say an application would not necessarily have been retained.
University records show Ms Guertin and Ms Dunham attended between 1963 and late 1966. It was at the end of this time that the White Australia policy was in the process of being dismantled.
The search did uncover evidence that Mr Obama has visited before - albeit very briefly.
An arrival card bearing the future President's signature shows he had just turned 14 when he passed through Sydney Airport from Indonesia. Mr Obama was attending high school in Hawaii at the time.
Last year, after the announcement of his aborted Australian visit, Mr Obama told ABC TV: ''I've got wonderful memories. I used to travel through Australia when my mother was living in Indonesia and my grandparents were living in Hawaii, and so we'd usually go through Sydney and memories I have [are] not only of it being a beautiful country but of people being just wonderfully hospitable and kind to me.''
Of course, it is far from clear whether Ms Guertin's recollection amounts to a potential history-changing decision by Australian immigration officials.
Ms Dunham died of ovarian cancer in 1995. A fellow anthropologist and friend, Bronwen Solyom, who worked with her in Indonesia, told the Herald: ''I met Ann Dunham in the early '70s. In the many years that I knew her, she never mentioned any such thing to me.''
But one thing is certain: when the President visits again it will be more than a rushed excursion from an airport transit lounge.
