Wallabies captain Stirling Mortlock believes his side's recent near miss against the All Blacks could help elevate his troops to new heights on their upcoming spring tour.
Under the tutelage of new coach Robbie Deans, the new-look Australian squad came agonisingly close to ending a seven-year Tri Nations drought only to fall at the final hurdle against Graham Henry's men in Brisbane.
But the 31-year-old skipper believes the six-match tour starting with an historic meeting with the All Blacks in Hong Kong on November 1, could signal the start of another golden era.
"I've been looking at this tour with a huge amount of excitement and positivity," Mortlock said on Monday.
"I think the path this group has been on this year has been not too bad, obviously we would have liked to have got a result in our last match but that wasn't to be."
"But I think nonetheless that probably instils a little bit more resolve amongst this group to hopefully have a really positive tour."
"It's very exciting. There's a lot of young guys who have done extremely well so far this season and it's going to be a great test for them and for us as a group to hopefully take that overseas."
The 34-man Wallabies squad assembled in Sydney on Monday for the first of four mini-camps over the next month in preparation for matches against New Zealand, Italy, England, France, Wales and the Barbarians.
Asked how success will be measured on the end-of-season tour, Mortlock replied:
"First and foremost we've got to improve on our foundations of our game and probably our ability to execute under fatigue and under pressure."
"You'd love to have outstanding results as well … but certainly we're going to go overseas with a real positive mindset to hopefully get some good results over there, but I think this is a great opportunity for the team and for the group to make some big inroads."
"This is the coaching staff's real first lead in to quality time without actually playing Test matches to take this group forward and from my perspective that's where I think we can make significant inroads and hopefully that'll translate to results."
Pressed on the specific areas requiring most improvement, the skipper said the scrum and lineout remained a work in progress but conceded the side's defence requires more remedial work.
"Defensively I think what we're trying to do as a team is something quite different from where we have been in the past and probably that caught up with us towards the back end of the domestic series," he said.
"We'll come together as a group and really determine a collective purpose of where we think we really need to go and work on that."