The first call between world leaders should be an easy, low-key affair - some pleasantries, an acknowledgment of the importance of the relationship, possibly a tentative suggestion of a state visit.
But the weekend chat between US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was anything but ordinary. And people are now wondering how the extraordinary details were made public.
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Turnbull Trumped by phone-y diplomacy
As embarrassing details of Malcolm Turnbull's first phone call with Donald Trump are revealed, the refugee agreement the President blasted as "the worst deal ever" hangs in the balance. Courtesy Seven News Melbourne.
There were only a handful of witnesses to the conversation which took place early on Saturday afternoon, Washington time.
Mr Trump's controversial chief strategist Stephen Bannon, national security adviser Michael Flynn and White House press secretary Sean Spicer were in the Oval Office when the call was made. Mr Turnbull was the fifth world leader Mr Trump had spoken to that day. It was just after 5pm and the newly minted president had earlier finished calls with the leaders of Japan, Germany, Russia and France.
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The Prime Minister on Monday described the call as "constructive" and has emphasised since then that the agreement struck with former president Barack Obama to resettle asylum seekers from Manus Island and Nauru would go ahead.
But on Thursday afternoon the Turnbull government was rocked by The Washington Post's extraordinary fly-on-the-wall account of the conversation.
A call that was supposed to last for one hour was abruptly halted after about 25 minutes, although Australian sources dispute that a call of that kind rarely goes for an hour. They say somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes is more usual.
CNN's senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta later reported that Mr Trump pulled the phone away from his ear and told advisers he wanted off the call.
Mr Turnbull has denied Mr Trump hung up on him and said the call was "courteous".
"I'm surprised and disappointed that there's been a leak of what's purported to be details of the call in Washington," he said.
Some in Canberra have speculated that Mr Bannon, Mr Trump's close and most ideologically fierce adviser, may have leaked the details about the call in order to demonstrate that even if Mr Trump eventually accepts the refugee deal, he is doing so only grudgingly and angrily.
Mr Turnbull's ministers and advisers suspect the story was leaked because the Trump administration remains deeply suspicious of the refugee deal.
A key difference between the conversation with Mr Trump and the day's other talks with world leaders was that Mr Turnbull had something he needed to bed down.
He did not want to have a general exchange of pleasantries; he wanted an assurance that refugee deal would be honoured, a deal that cuts against the grain of the anti-immigration message Donald Trump used to help win the presidency.
When Mr Trump went nuclear, Mr Turnbull did not roll over and play dead.
"I know Malcolm very well and he would have gave as much as he got," Tony Abbott's former chief of staff, Peta Credlin, said on Thursday.
Now the fallout begins, but whether we ever find out who caused the bombshell in the first place remains unclear, and unlikely.
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