What a difference 12 months makes. At this time last year, the Wallabies were 0-4 having wound up their Rugby Championship campaign with a devastating away loss to the All Blacks in Dunedin.
We should have seen Eddie Jones' whacking of the Forsyth Barr Stadium coaches' box desk as a sign of things to come, as the season completely unraveled thereafter.
But here the Wallabies are, at 3-0 under Joe Schmidt, albeit after a far easier run of Tests against Wales [2] and Georgia. There were also more than just a couple of uncomfortable moments in those Test victories, just enough to have Australian supporters shifting in their AAMI Park and Allianz Stadium seats.
And the challenge grows exponentially from here now, too.
Awaiting them this Saturday in Brisbane are the two-time defending world champion Springboks. With Rassie Erasmus [officially] back at the helm, and a large chunk of the World Cup-winning squad on deck, they are rightful $1.28 favourites with the bookmakers.
But South Africa's record in Australia is surprisingly poor, underlined by the fact that their win in Sydney in 2022 was their first on these shores since 2013.
So maybe the result isn't as cut and dried as you might think?
A week earlier in 2022, the Wallabies, then under Dave Rennie, caught the Springboks on the hop early with a try to Fraser McReight, before Marika Koroibete did his thing, on both sides of the ball, and Australia eventually survived a late surge from the world champions to secure a 25-17 win.
While that Test is perhaps best remembered for Koroibete's try-saving tackle on Makazole Mapimpi - a hit that divided opinion but was ruled legal by Kiwi ref Paul Williams - Nic White's theatrics following a palm from Faf de Klerk also left a sour taste in the Springboks' mouths.
And they rode that anger and intensity to a commanding win in Sydney seven days later.
But there is no White, nor Koroibete this weekend, and Schmidt also resisted repatriating Will Skelton to help shore up what has so far been a shaky defensive maul. Then there is the loss of Taniela Tupou, who has been given the week off following the death of his father.
"Taniela is Taniela. He's massively powerful. At the same time, we've got to be able to build depth," Schmidt said. "One of the things we tried to do through July even at the risk of making 10 changes before Georgia and five before the Wales Test to try to grow that base.
"We're in a very different stage of our development as compared to the Springbok and that's always a risk. We've got about half as many caps and a quarter of those belong to James Slipper.
"From that perspective, we're still going to keep trying to build and if we do lose someone, we've got to be able to best operate as a Wallaby squad and not be overly reliant on individual players."
With no Tupou, Allan Alaalatoa has the responsibility at tighthead, so too the captaincy, in what is a huge challenge against the Springboks pack - and their infamous bench "bomb squad".
"You've got to have conviction in what you're doing. You're always conscious of what they're going to bring and it's confrontational and hard to shut down," Schmidt said.
"By being overly focused on them, we can start to lose a bit of our own identity in how these players we've got want to play. It was a balance.
"I've made enough mistakes in so many years I've been involved with coaching that we haven't necessarily got it right. But we're still finding out who we are, let alone trying to cater for what the opposition bring."
As Schmidt says, this is a Wallabies rebuild very much in its infancy. While there have been three genuine highs to start, it's likely there will be several, if not multiple, lows before the Test season reaches its conclusion against Ireland on Nov. 30.
When the Kiwi had the reins of the Emerald Isle, they were very much a team of conviction, a team that knew how it wanted to play and didn't stray far from it. That brought Six Nations titles, maiden wins over the All Blacks, and just about a full house every time the team ran out onto the Aviva Stadium in Dublin.
Schmidt also has that in Brisbane this weekend, which shows the Australian rugby community wants to trust its national team again. But they've got to keep earning it, too.
"Walking back from a function yesterday, people in the street were saying good luck on Saturday," Schmidt reflected on the Wallabies' time in Brisbane. "I haven't spent a huge amount of time in the rugby community here but there seems to be a real support going into the weekend which swings both ways for us.
"There's an expectation that we have to try to live up to but there's a support that we want to keep earning... we've got to collectively build a Wallabies team, squad and belief. Hopefully, there can be a little bit of a look at that on Saturday."