The Kookaburras have finished on top of Pool A at the Hockey World League thanks to a 6-2 win over India in Antwerp.
Chris Ciriello's hat-trick underpinned the result while Jamie Dwyer found the roof of the net with a superb tomahawk strike from the top of the circle and other goals were added by Aran Zalewski and Kieran Govers.
Australia will now face Ireland in a quarter-final on Wednesday after the Irish finished fourth in Pool B, beaten 2-1 by Belgium, who topped the pool to line-up a quarter-final against France.
The other two quarter-finals will be Great Britain against Pakistan and India versus Malaysia.
The Kookaburras have played Ireland just once in the past 25 years for a 4-2 Australian win in Paris in July 2011.
Before that, five of their previous six meetings came in the space of 12 months in 1979 and 1980, with a solitary encounter in Lisburn in 1990 making up the seven previous encounters.
But coach Graham Reid said they won't be underestimating them: "They play a lot like GB and that's perhaps why Ireland drew with GB (in their pool game) but it proves they're a very good team."
Reid was pleased with Sunday's performance and the improvement from the previous match against Poland.
"That's the sort of performance you need to have against these guys because they have improved and they are now a top nation" he said.
"We took our foot off a bit in the third quarter but then we came back again and that was a really pleasing thing. We got a little bit frustrated but we got on top of that frustration, which we didn't do against Poland."
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