We present preliminary results of an acoustic analysis of monophthongal vowels produced by five female Irish migrants in Melbourne, with lengths of residence in Australia between 1.5 and 9.5 years. This sample is compared with five female Australian English (AusE) participants. Results show greater overall variability within the Irish group compared to the AusE group for the majority of vowels. Sociophonetic variability also emerged, for example with only two migrants producing an expected Irish English FOOT-STRUT merger. One ‘non-merger’ with the longest length of residence, and a social network comprised exclusively of Australians, also displayed initial signs of movement towards other AusE vowel targets, such as a fronted /ʉ:/. This research contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of dialect contact, indicating movement in the direction of AusE after approximately ten years of exposure.