Australia have fought back in stunning fashion on day two, with Mitchell Johnson and Nathan Lyon seizing control away from England in the first Test at the Gabba.

Spinner Lyon took two wickets in successive balls and comeback kid Johnson finished with four with England rolled for 136 and Australia taking an unlikely 159-run first innings lead.

After looking solid at 2-82, England were all out after just 52.4 overs and 250 minutes at the crease.

England lost 6-9 in a middle session capitulation that made Australia’s first innings total of 295 look substantial.

Who would have thought Australia would bat again on day two?

Between lunch and tea England lost 6-39 and then after the break, Ryan Harris and Peter Siddle cleaned up the tail.

Opener Michael Carberry made 40 and Stuart Broad 32, but no other England batsman passed 18.

The Ashes holders fell into all the traps laid out by Australian captain Michael Clarke.

Harris (3-28) and Johnson (4-61) took care of the England top four, but the match really turned on its head when much-maligned off-spinner Lyon had run-machine Ian Bell caught by Steve Smith at short-leg.

The very next ball it was deja vu, with Smith flying to his right from bat-pad to nab Matt Prior, who had clearly nudged one onto his pads.

Broad, who was the third victim in Peter Siddle’s hat-trick at the Gabba in 2010-11, came into a chorus of jeers with the score at 6-87.

Lyon (2-17) muffed the hat-trick ball, but in the next over the jubilation returned when No.6 Joe Root became Johnson’s third wicket, edging to the slips to give Smith his third successive catch.

Lyon and Johnson might have turned the knife, but it was Harris who started the ball rolling when he removed Alastair Cook for 13, just when England’s openers looked to be getting set.

Then after a less than auspicious start, Johnson returned to the attack with the specific job of exposing Trott’s weakness against the short ball.

He had immediate success and Trott was back in the pavilion on the last ball before lunch, after edging down legside to Brad Haddin.

In his 50th Test, it was Haddin’s 200th dismissal, with his superb 94 powering Australia back from their own collapse where they were at one stage 6-132.

Harris celebrated the key wicket of Kevin Pietersen in his 100th Test to make it 3-82, and from there the flood gates opened.