Wallabies captain Stirling Mortlock shunned bold predictions of an unbeaten tour in favour of less tangible goals as the national rugby squad flew out for the northern hemisphere.

Given the Wallabies' away record in recent years, the strength of their opposition and the injuries which have cost them key forwards, it was a circumspect Mortlock who emphasised continuing growth and development of coach Robbie Deans' new-look squad.

The party of 34 includes four new caps and nine other players with five or fewer Test appearances.

Additionally, there are players like backs Peter Hynes and Ryan Cross who can still be classed as Test rookies.

The Wallabies face five of the world's top-10 nations plus a star-studded Barbarians side, without established forwards Rocky Elsom, Dan Vickerman and the fast-improving James Horwill.

The six-match campaign starts with the dead rubber Bledisloe Cup Test against world No.1 New Zealand in Hong Kong on Saturday.

The itinerary continues with Tests against Italy and the three highest-ranked northern hemisphere sides, England (fifth), Wales (sixth) and France (seventh), and concludes at Wembley Stadium against the Barbarians.

While Mortlock said an unbeaten campaign wasn't impossible, he emphasised the tour's challenges and "significant opportunities".

"Every week there will be a significant mountain to climb and a new challenge," Mortlock said.

"In Italy a couple of years ago we found it very difficult to play there and all the matches, looking ahead on this tour, will be quite difficult.

"Obviously, at the end of the day, you want to have a successful tour by your win-and-loss ratio.

"I think in this team there's a huge amount of guys who haven't been on many spring tours, a lot of guys that are in their first and second season at Test match level and some uncapped guys, as well.

"It's a great opportunity to blood some of our younger guys and for them to get greater awareness of what they can achieve as a group.

"I think growth is really important on this tour. We've come off a Tri-Nations campaign where we went all right, but we weren't successful, so we know exactly where we want to improve our game.

"If we do that again, that would be good enough in itself and hopefully the by-product of that would be good results."

New Zealand and Australia have had different lead ups to Saturday's game with the majority of Wallabies not playing since the climax of the Tri-Nations close to two months ago.

The Australians went into four weekly camps in Sydney, while the majority of New Zealand's stars stayed match fit over the closing rounds of their domestic competition.

"They will be match-hardened and ready to go, whereas we've had an opportunity to regroup as a team and think upon where we want to take our game," Mortlake said.

"We definitely needed a solid block of work together because realistically it's pretty hard in the season, you always have a match to focus on."

Mortlock didn't expect Australia and New Zealand would change their traditional high-tempo style this weekend, even if the conditions were very humid as expected.

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