"These fascinating accounts of what has been going on in Canberra have been read with great interest by The Queen. Indeed, Her Majesty's interest in them has to some extent delayed this reply. She likes to read them at leisure." - Queen's secretary Sir Martin Charteris to Kerr (July 30, 1975)

"I'm also keeping my mind open as to the constitutional issues .... My role will need some careful thought." - Kerr to the Queen (September 12, 1975)

"You will note that in what I have written I have expressed no view about what I may do in various contingencies. I think it better to keep my mind and my options open so that if the worst happens I can decide at the last moment what to do." - Kerr to Charteris (September 20, 1975)

"The Governor-General of Australia does not seem to lie on a bed of roses and it is clear that you may be faced with some difficult constitutional decisions during the next month or so." - Charteris to Kerr (September 24, 1975)

"I believe (Eugene Forsey) lays it down as a principle that if supply is refused this always makes it constitutionally proper to grant a dissolution." - Charteris to Kerr, handwritten postscript (September 24, 1975)

"(Malcolm Fraser) is obviously under very great pressure to do what he can to bring the government down." - Kerr to Charteris (September 30, 1975)

"I am very sorry indeed that things are developing in this way but am still hopeful that one way or another constitutional stability can be achieved during November." - Kerr to Charteris (September 30, 1975)

"Prince Charles told me ... that you had spoken of the possibility of the Prime Minister advising the Queen to terminate your commission ....You may be sure that the Queen would take most unkindly to it ... but I think it is right that I should make the point that at the end of the road the Queen, as a constitutional sovereign, would have no option but to follow the advice of her Prime Minister." - Charteris to Kerr (October 2, 1975)

"The Queen sends you her best wishes: she is very conscious of the problems that may face you, and confident of your ability to deal with them." - Charteris to Kerr (October 2, 1975)

"Before dinner last night, the prime minister, in what he would claim to have been a jocular fashion, said apropos of the crisis, 'It could be a question of whether I get to the Queen first for your recall or you get in first with my dismissal.' We all laughed." - Kerr to Charteris (October 17, 1975)

"I've appreciated very much the letters you've written to me. I do not know what will happen, or what I shall end up by doing, but the country is set on a collision course now of historic proportions." - Kerr to Charteris (October 17, 1975)

"I think you are playing the vice-regal hand with skill and wisdom ... The fact you have powers is recognised. But it's also clear you will only use them in the last resort, and then only for constitutional - and not for political - reasons." - Charteris to Kerr (November 4, 1975)

"I should say I decided to take the step I took without informing the palace in advance because, under the Constitution, the responsibility is mine, and I was of the opinion it was better for Her Majesty not to know in advance, though it is of course my duty to tell her immediately." - Kerr (November 11, 1975)

"Your action, buttressed as it is by the opinion of the Chief Justice, cannot easily be challenged from a constitutional point of view however much the politicians will, of course, rage." - Charteris to Kerr (November 17, 1975)

"I fear that some people when they nominate some distinguished man to be Governor-General of Australia imagine that he is their humble, obedient servant ... we might as well have an automatic machine - a kind of robot." - Robert Menzies to Kerr (November 19, 1975)

Australian Associated Press