This week I watched my old friend Sam Mostyn named governor-general and her success felt sweet

There's that one moment in that one Bluey episode when two hands meet – one small, awkward and from the past; one gloved, grown and in the very real present of an Australian Test game – that gets me every single time.

I don't play cricket. I've never been sportingly competitive. But yes, I have watched the Bluey Cricket episode any number of times.

My son watches it with me, stealing glances the entire seven minutes, asking me repeatedly: "Are you going to cry?" I can usually manage to answer him except for the one time he asks me right at the end, as the boy of the past leaves the field, and walks on as the man he always dreamed of being.

Can you imagine what that must feel like? Watching your child step onto that field of dreams, after so many years of hard work, living all the potential you ever saw in him? No wonder the aphorisms are of hearts swelling, bursting, exploding: I get it just from watching a cartoon.

The sweetness of a friend's success

I've been thinking about these moments of pride in another's achievements as we watch children grow, colleagues advance and friends move through the stages of their life, their accomplishments feeling every bit as sweet as if they were our own. I never shared Gore Vidal's bitterness about the success of friends: it made no sense to me.

Indeed, when you have the great good taste of being mates with, say, that young woman who just had a top 10 record, or that bloke who swims the 100 metres freestyle on the Australian team – then how smart are you!

Every Australian cricketer, Nobel prize winner, Oscar-winning star has a family, has a bunch of mates, has an ordinary life: they started out young and failing on the same pitch as our Bluey hero. But unlike say Rusty's parents who would have lived every moment of the failing and succeeding that got him to the top, I've watched something similar happen this week from a much greater distance.

I have known Sam Mostyn, the woman announced this week as our next Governor General, since my first days out of university, as part of a mob of young women trying to make our way in the world. Our lives were a mosaic of idealism and ambition, false starts and great opportunities, had work and hard-fought successes. Sam was brilliant from the start, quietly and intelligently focused, and none of us were in any doubt that she was destined for very big things.

Many of those big things were firsts: the first woman on the AFL Commission; the first to convene an Economic Equality Taskforce for the federal government. She was always cool headed and thoughtful, strategic and watchful. You don't so successfully break into the blokes board culture in the way Sam did without being aware of every little thing, every little consequence around you. It would have been exhausting, but I never asked. I was just so pleased that she did.

Sam and I connected over issues of equality and equity; she came on Q+A with me when I needed her expertise and thoughtfulness; we often spoke together at public events; and on the few occasions we got to catch up, we connected over the health and happiness of our singletons, our mutual friends, and of all the other terrific women we knew and loved.

I have a picture of us that another friend dug out and sent to me the night of Sam's appointment of the very first Field of Women event organised by another brilliant women, Lyn Swinburne, back in 2005 to draw attention to the number of women and men who die of breast cancer. It's a rather impressive bunch, and I have that same feeling of pride in another's achievements when I look at them all.

I imagine it must be something like being friends with the kid who is named as Australian Test captain: you'd be so chuffed to realise that you knew her as a scrappy kid. I'd never describe Sam Mostyn as scrappy – but I think she's going to hit this one for six.

This weekend a little more on our new GG, some jellyfish and some feijoas: strange fruit indeed.

Also, do not forget to be near your TV at 9pm this Tuesday night for the very first episode of my new show Creative Types: first up is the shining soul that is Trent Dalton. You're going to love it.

Have a safe and happy weekend and after being teased for weeks on social media, the rarefied Aussie darlings that are Empire of the Sun have released a song from their first new album in eight years. This is Changes, and it's romantic and otherworldly and of course you can dance to it. Do we need anything more?

Go well.