ONE of Australia's foremost Aboriginal storytellers has been weaving his tales in the area's schools this week.

Francis Firebrace, a 68-year-old Aborigine elder, visited Bowes on Wednesday as part of the school's aim to promote multiculturalism.

The year-long project is funded by a grant of more than £5,000 from the County Durham Foundation and will include visits by other artists.

Mr Firebrace is also a poet and artist whose work takes him into schools, colleges, theatres and libraries. He puts his popularity down to the fact that his stories have no boundaries.

"They put over old-fashioned values in a human way, using good old common sense, and it works," he said. "The stories carry important messages about caring for each other and the earth, and about racism and greed, which are the same whatever your culture and background.

"The English culture is quite reserved, but when I appear half-dressed in the loincloth of my own culture I invite a curiosity that usually wins the kids over," he said.

Mr Firebrace told how the turning point came in his own life when his daughter died of cancer.

"I let go of material things and I found my freedom," he added. "I changed my outlook and started telling the stories handed down through 200,000 years of Aboriginal culture.

"Life is a journey. Why not make it an exciting one?"