Leaving my 'L' plater at the beach, I borrowed her car and hit the highway for the nine-and-a-half hour journey, including a 50-minute stop over at home to pat the pooch and chat with the chooks.

As is important on such long solo drives, I sang, thought forward, looked back, cried, listened to some excellent Bible study lectures on CD and then dabbled in the cricket on the radio.

It was a crisp, blue, hot summer's day, and within 100 kilometres of home, the sky just seemed to open up even wider as I approached the part of Australia that is my country. Flat, dry and as brown as every other year, I breathed in the clear country air of the rural Australia I am so lucky to have been born into.

In Melbourne on my training course, I made some brand new friends yet to tackle the trek up the highway to my farmlands.

Marlee is no slouch in the Aussie spirit of courageous adventure though; she and her waist-length dreadlocks have busked all the way to Darwin and back.

Alfred arrived from Hong Kong 40 years ago and has three adult children living in the community he helps lead in the inner city, while Abbey is still pretty fresh off the farm in Michigan but is already planning her wedding here in October - she's got the dress and it's gorgeous.

Michelle goes up the river to water ski, has two grandchildren and lives close enough to the edge of the city to keep her horse and ride it, while Matthew has an art studio and teaches.

"...I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains. I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea, her beauty and her terror - the wide brown land for me!" (Dorothea Mackellar 1904).

I love the bigness, the beauty and the brilliance of the brains born and brought to Australia.

Our freedom and fellowship in this great nation are absolutely worth celebrating.

Happy Australia Day people - dive into being the brightest and best you!