Never heard this either, though it is plausible - I believe Australia was the first to sequence outside of China, and had extremely low cases reported at the time.

This article mentions the Chinese lab released images of the sequence which is what assisted the Australian lab in reproduction[1], maybe those images is what they are referring to?

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-29/wuhan-coronavirus-cre...