South Africa enjoyed a utopian start to their Test series in Australia, winning the opening match by 177 runs - yet captain Faf du Plessis believes there is plenty of improvement to come.

The Proteas, visitors for Test cricket’s return to Trent Bridge in July, secured their historic triumph in Perth despite being 32-4 on the opening morning.

The former Lancashire man believes his side’s strength in adversity – together with the sprinkling of youthful talent that has seen the likes of Kagiso Rabada, Temba Bavuma and Keshav Maharaj play an increasingly prominent role in recent times - will continue to make South Africa a tough nut to crack in the five-day arena.

"We rely quite heavily on being a very resilient team," du Plessis said.

"We're full of resilient players and personalities.

“If you look back on past performances there's been a lot of occasions when we are really under massive pressure and somehow a few of the guys who are really resilient fight really hard to get back in the game.

“That's always been a strong trait of this team.

"We're also trying to add being a little bit more positive to that. “Resilience generally comes from a position of defence, when you're in trouble.

“So we're trying to make sure that we can be a little bit stronger by putting teams in that position first and not be them doing it to us."

Quinton Du Kock’s 84 was the mainstay of South Africa’s recovery to 242 all out at the WACA.

Conceding a deficit of two runs, having originally watched David Warner (97) and Usman Khawaja (63) blast Australia to 158-0, represented success for the tourists in the first innings.

Dean Elgar (127) and JP Duminy (141) then made the host nation toil in posting a mammoth second innings total of 540-8.

Rabada did the rest, collecting his fourth five-wicket haul in just nine matches to dismiss the Aussies for 361.

"Resilience is being able to adapt to a position of what the team needs to do rather than what you as a player want to do,” added du Plessis.

“I can name a lot of our players who can do that. It's a great asset to have.

"Luckily for us, in the previous Test match, we could do that a little bit more often than Australia did.

“They had that opportunity and they let it slip, we did really well to keep that momentum for the rest of the four days."

"It just comes with confidence. That's something you have to go through a few times to learn how to get out of it.

“We as a team have been through it a lot of times.

“Our team is very well balanced with young and older guys at the moment.

“But the more we play together as a test team the better we'll get, because we're still quite inexperienced as a Test team."

Australia and South Africa will renew hostilities in Hobart this evening with an 11.30am start, UK time.