Wallabies hero Kurtley Beale knew the 80th minute kick of his life was going to make history the moment it left his boot.

Beale provided the dramatic end to an epic Test on Saturday, when the emerging Australian side stunningly broke a 47-year victory drought at altitude in South Africa with a 41-39 victory over the most-capped Springboks side ever assembled.

With the Wallabies' hopes almost gone when a Morne Steyn penalty goal made it 39-38 to the Boks in the 77th minute, a breakdown infringement from Flip van der Merwe as the Boks would down the clock allowed Beale to step up.

With two howling errors fresh in his mind, including an embarrassing Falcon (headbutt) of a Quade Cooper pass, Beale placed the ball 49m out and 10m in from the right touchline.

"There were certainly a lot of nerves," he said.

"I didn't know who was going to kick, me or Quade, I was actually looking for Gits (Matt Giteau) but he was off the field.

"I kind of feel that the boys wanted me to kick it so I put my hand up.

"I just had to stick to the process, not worry about the crowd or anything else.

"I hit it with the sweet spot so as soon as I kicked it I knew that it was going to travel over."

The flags went up and Australia had one of their greatest victories ever, securing the Nelson Mandela Challenge Plate and leapfrogging South Africa into second place on the IRB world rankings in the process.

Like last week's heartbreaker in Pretoria, though, it almost went horribly wrong.

This time Australia were up 31-6 after four tries in 25 minutes before allowing the Springboks to score the next three.

The third of those, from centre Jean de Villiers, got the Boks to 31-30 and came after Beale threw a dreadful pass back over the head of Cooper close to his own goal-line and the ball went dead.

South Africa finally grabbed the lead through two Steyn penalty goals, the second after Wallabies reserve hooker Saia Faingaa was sinbinned for a dangerous lifting tackle.

Down to 14 men, the Wallabies rallied to lead 38-36 after a slashing Drew Mitchell try from Berrick Barnes' smart in pass before Steyn regained the lead.

Enter Beale and an incredible end to an incredible Test match.

"I had to keep going, I couldn't focus on the mistakes that I'd made," said Beale.

"I had to just keep doing my job, I couldn't let the boys down and we knew if we kept going and we kept plugging away we might have an opportunity.

"Thank God that we got that opportunity and thank God that the kick went over."

Celebrating his 51st birthday, Wallabies coach Robbie Deans had every confidence in his fullback.

"I was very positive when I saw KB step up, he's a very positive bloke, he's a point of difference player," Deans said.

"I knew when he got hold of the ball it was a prospect, a good prospect.

"It's pretty humiliating to have a ball hit you on the forehead in front of a capacity crowd at Bloemfontein, but his response from that moment was magnificent."

Captain Rocky Elsom applauded his side's character but wasn't getting over-excited about breaking the high veld drought.

"It feels pretty good," he said.

"For a lot of reasons, that will be one of the more memorable matches I've played."

Australian Rugby Union boss John O'Neill called it one of the great Wallabies victories.

"It was one for the ages," he said.

"You think about John Eales' kick in Wellington, Stirling Mortlock's kick in Durban, you think about Toutai Kefu's try, you think about Matt Burke's goal in 2002 and you lock this one in the vault - Kurtley Beale's goal almost on the bell in, of all places, Bloemfontein."

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