For years, commentators have trotted out the tired old "house of pain" line when referring to an interstate side's visit to Patersons Stadium for a match against either West Coast or Fremantle.
So, to win twice in Perth in a single season for the first time was an achievement of which North Melbourne should be proud.
But one player in a blue-and-white jumper had done it all before.
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That player was Nick Dal Santo, though last time it happened his jumper was red, black and white.
In 2010, the Grand Final-bound St Kilda beat West Coast by 35 points before returning three weeks later and knocking off Fremantle by 18 points.
Dal Santo says the North Melbourne of 2014 doesn't quite match up to the St Kilda of 2010 - yet.
"It's hard to compare," he said.
"I think there is [similarity] in certain ways, but to say we are similar to the 2010 Saints is hard.
"I think we're a bit more up and down. Across the league there's a lot of inconsistency from week to week.
"A lot of upsets at the moment, but that's our challenge as a leadership group; to get the boys ready to go each week and just to give it our best shot and see what comes from that."
The comparisons between North Melbourne's first 10 games of 2014 and St Kilda's first 10 of 2010 are not limited to their victories in Perth, however.
Both sides also beat the Swans in Sydney and the Western Bulldogs at Etihad Stadium. And both sides suffered defeat at the hands of Essendon.
Unlike the St Kilda of 2010, however, North Melbourne is backing up from a season in which it lost 10 games by fewer than three goals.
Dal Santo said the team's younger players had learnt from that experience.
"Even though I wasn't here, I felt the learning that they would have got from last year, from those close games, would have rolled into this year," he said.
"It's funny because they started off games really well last year and then faded out. This year, it's gone the other way. We have had to fight back from some poor starts."
Against West Coast, there was no sign of a poor start.
North shot away to an early lead, kicking the first two goals of the match. At quarter-time the Roos led by three points. They were never headed in winning by 38 points.
"We have spoken about it. We've had to address it. At this level, it's hard to get away with a really poor start and then expect to be able to run teams down," Dal Santo said.
"We did it a couple of times this year. But there have been three or four games where we have been way off the mark. So, we did speak about our start, even more so when it's interstate.
"You've got 25-50 supporters they let in the ground over here and it's a quiet place when you are kicking goals over here, so that's good. It was a good start and we will have to focus on that going forward because we can't give teams head starts."
Dal Santo is now wary of letting North Melbourne's supporters down next week against Richmond. After beating the Swans away from home in April, they lost to Collingwood, while the victory over Fremantle in Perth was followed by a loss to Gold Coast in Melbourne.
"It feels like every time we've got a really big challenge, we are able to respond and then we go back home where we should be able to play good football and don't perform. So that's our challenge," Dal Santo said.
"They [Richmond] will be up for a fight after their game yesterday, as well. They have got a quality midfield and I don't think they're far off. You don't have to be far off to look average in this league and they have a lot of dangerous players that we will need to research and be ready to play against next week."
