I seem to remember that the Honda said no to importing them so the Honda Dealer from Orange and one or two other dealers from across oz imported them as a group.
Now here's where the memory lets me down, I think the numbers were very low like 10 or 20 (250's) and maybe 50 (175's) or vise versa . A fellow apprentice picked up a new 175 from Orange (Bennett Honda I think) at the beginning of 1978 and was the last one on the floor. The story about the imports was in either T&T or ADB at the time and that had the actual numbers imported.
I also recall that the Canobalas Enduro in 1977 or 1978 had about 6 or 8 MR's in it and I'm not sure any finished!
The same year another apprentice got the XL 250 and there was light years between the two bikes. The MR was slow and low more like a DT175A in most ways apart from an added inch or two at each end, the XL, fast high and reliable.
PB