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I remember the story of visiting the set becoming a favourite party piece. In 2001 Slim told journalist Greg Bearup: "When I went to America, they took me to Paramount Studios and let me sit in Captain Kirk's chair. I picked up one of those authentic phaser guns. It's got an adaptation for long range, and when you take that off it's ideal at the shorter distances."

I think Slim relished the shock value - watching the expression on people's faces as they tried to reconcile the incongruous combination of bush balladeer and "Beam me up Scottie".

Slim's interest in space, and indeed science, extended beyond science fiction.

He was no academic - his patchy formal schooling ended at the age of 12 - but he was fascinated by archaeology and space travel, and there were always copies of magazines and Reader's Digest compendiums on these topics lying around.

My grandmother, Joy Kirkpatrick, remembers reading aloud from a Reader's Digest series on the discoveries of Kenyan anthropologist Richard Leakey to pass the long hours on the road while my grandfather drove through the outback. "Slim was very interested in the dawn of man and in the future, in space," she says.

So it was a great honour when astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen played Slim's version of 'Waltzing Matilda" from the space shuttle Columbia as it passed over Australia in 1981. "Biggest audience I've ever had!" he joked.

In an interview in 2006, Crippen revealed an ulterior motive for his music selection: "I kept a tape of 'Waltzing Matilda' and played it just as we were coming over one of the Australian ground stations, just hoping that maybe someone would give us an invite to go to Australia, since I'd never been there… it worked!"

Slim did not meet the astronauts when they visited Australia as he was on the road, but they left him an autographed photo of Columbia blasting off and an invitation to join them at their annual chilli cookout at Cape Canaveral.

When you think about it, it's not so surprising that Slim Dusty was a Trekkie. He grew up listening to singing cowboys like Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, and what are the crew of the Enterprise but space-age cowboys, exploring the final frontier.

Maybe the man born David Gordon Kirkpatrick simply felt a sense of kinship with Captain James Tiberius Kirk.

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