Teenage fullback James O'Connor celebrated his first full test appearance with a hat-trick of tries in Australia's 31-8 win over Italy on Saturday.
The 18-year-old made a dream start to his first run-on match for the Wallabies, scoring his opening try in the fourth minute then crossing twice more.
Flyhalf Matt Giteau scored a fortuitous try in the first half after the ball ricocheted off his knee, as well as converting three of the five Australian tries.
The Wallaby skipper Stirling Mortlock barged his way over in the second half to snuff out any chances of an Italian fightback after the tourists had scored eight unanswered points either side of the break through their Antipodean recruits.
Australian-born fullback Luke McLean opened their account with a penalty on the stroke of halftime then New Zealand-born wing Kaine Robertson charged over two minutes after the re-start when he combined with Craig Gower, a former Australian rugby league international.
The Italians had never beaten Australia in any of their previous 10 encounters and were given little real hope of ending their drought on a cold winter's night at Canberra Stadium after finishing bottom of this year's European Six Nations.
The Australians warmed up for the match with a comprehensive 55-7 win over the Barbarians last weekend and looked set for another lopsided win when O'Connor strolled in untouched after three and a half minutes only to be stalled by some resilient Italian defending.
O'Connor scored his second after half an hour then his third midway through the second term, wriggling through two defenders to complete his hat-trick.
The two teams meet again in Melbourne next week for their second and final test.
