Up to 15,000 people – many of them claiming Scottish heritage – gathered among the gum trees to toss the caber, eat haggis and feel the power of 17 massed bands of pipes and drums.

Chieftain of the day was Lord Sempill, 21st chief of the clan of Sempill, and a man on a mission.

‘‘He is coming out here to drum up support to come back to Scotland next year and participate in all that’s happening,’’ said Alaistair Saunders, one of the highland-gathering committee, ahead of the event.

Next year will be a big year for Scotland.

Glasgow will host the Commonwealth Games and it is the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, when the Scots routed the English.

Though the Scots were victors on that day, the issue of independence was only settled in a temporary manner and is still alive today.

Next year, Scots will vote on whether to claim their right to rule themselves via the ballot box.

Because more than 80 per cent of clan membership lives outside Scotland, Lord Sempill is keen to strengthen ties with the tartan diaspora.

Saunders himself grew up in the west coast fishing town of Oban before joining the military and travelling the world.

He came to Australia in 1984 and now has grandchildren here, so he is unlikely to return to Scotland for anything more than a holiday.

‘‘The Scots are your original nomads,’’ he said.

‘‘Anywhere that needed to be explored or settled, you’ll find Scots.

‘‘The way I look at it is, I have made my bed and now I am going to lie in it.

‘‘Although Oban will always be home, my life is here with my children and my grandchildren.

‘‘I love to visit Scotland and see my friends, but this is where I belong now.’’

Saunders has been instrumental in gathering the clans together in one area at Brigadoon, so Australians with Scottish heritage can start to explore their genealogy.

It’s this mixture – ‘‘An Australian event with a wee bit of Scottish flavour,’’ Saunders says – that makes Brigadoon a very different event from a traditional highland games.

No-one is more keenly aware of this fact than the Reverend Jim MacEwan, a retired Church of Scotland minister, who brought greetings from Nethy Bridge.

He was minister for 32 years of the small village in the Cairngorms and was last year made chieftain, a largely symbolic role that lets him open the games and hand out some of the prizes.

After retiring last year, MacEwan and his wife came  to Australia to spend a year with their daughter, son-in-law and two small grandchildren.

Although the village is home to about 800 people, the Abernethy Highland Games (founded in 1880) attract a crowd of more than 3000.

‘‘It’s an incredibly social day where you meet a lot of people – some who have moved away, some who are tourists who come every year,’’ MacEwan said.

‘‘It’s the main attraction of the games for some people, on a par with the massed pipe bands and the heavy events.

‘‘For me, I find there is something about watching a huge number of pipes and drums that is just marvellous – they are colourful and they are loud.’’

MacEwan’s only participation in the games was a single entry into the 10-mile road race about 25 years ago, though for many years he has been in charge of the crews staffing the gates.

His childhood as the son of a minister included both extremes of the Scottish experience, growing up in the notorious Glasgow slum of the Gorbals before moving to the Orkneys as a teenager.

In the Orkneys, his father’s parish comprised two islands – Westray and Papa Westray – whose combined population numbered fewer than 1000.

‘‘The islands were in the Guinness Book of Records for holding the shortest commercial scheduled airline flight in the world,’’ MacEwan said.

‘‘The Logan Air timetable showed a flight time of two minutes between the islands, though it could be a minute and a half if you had a following wind.’’

MacEwan’s life in Orkney gave him a love of small places, so when he served as a minister in a large parish in Aberdeen, he chose Nethy Bridge as his next posting and stayed until he retired.

It will also mean  he will be voting ‘‘yes’’ in next year’s referendum for independence, though he suspects he will be in a minority.

‘‘I am a sucker for lost causes,’’ he said.

‘‘I think Scottish politics in general are very different from English politics.

‘‘For many years, England has had a permanent Tory majority where Scotland had one general election where there was not a single Tory among 72 MPs.

‘‘There is also a tremendous feeling that we would not have been in an illegal war in Iraq.

‘‘There is also a part of me that believes that small is beautiful. 

 ‘‘There is another type of nationalism that says that we are small, but we just want to be ourselves.’’