Keeping the dream alive

IT was an obvious question but one worth asking all the same: how come a shaggy-maned Aborigine from the wild Australian outback was sitting enjoying a cup of tea in a terraced house in Darlington?

Ask Francis Firebrace to explain and the 66-year storyteller and writer recounts a true-life tale of a family tragedy which changed his outlook on life and turned him from a successful entrepreneur into a travelling man.

To meet Francis is to experience a man with a typical Australian belief in telling it straight - "you English are so reserved, people lead such sheltered lives" - and who talks positively and is irked by the British gift for knocking down those who excel.

A compelling talker, he has spent recent weeks performing throughout the Tees Valley, mainly in schools to classes of all ages, as part of a programme designed to introduce the area to different cultures.

In his native dress and with his tales of ancient gods and exotic creatures like the platypus, he has kept his audiences on Teesside and in Darlington spellbound. But there is more to Francis Firebrace than simply being a storyteller: he is passionate about the Aborigine philosophy of respect for Man and Nature.

The journey which brought this globetrotting son of the Yorta Yorta people to the North-East of England began back in Australia. Francis Firebrace was brought up in the bush, his mother a white English/Prussian woman, his father a black Aborigine who taught his son rabbit and kangaroo trapping.

Young Francis lived in the bush in a tent until the age of three, then in a house with a dirt floor until he was six. Later in life he became a cattle drover, eventually owning his own successful business as a stockman.

Marrying a Polynesian/Aborigine woman, he fathered five children, and having abandoned droving at the age of 28, carved out a career as an award-winning filmmaker in Canberra. "I was living what I call the 'white man's dream'," he recalls.

But every life, so they say, has a turning point and for Francis it was the death in 1984 of his daughter Lorri, a victim of cancer when she was just 23, and the death of his wife.

'I don't really want to dwell on what happened," he says, 'But tragedy was a turning point for me. I let go of my material values and suddenly I found my freedom. By letting go of the past I opened the doors to the future. Since then I have travelled all over the globe, to places like the Yukon, Alaska and British Columbia. I have no home as such and I live where I live."

After the tragedy, he lived on a boat off the Queensland coast, taking tourists out to the islands and spinning yarns, sometimes trying to con them that they were in dangerous waters to add to the effect.

Word - or as he describes it, "notoriety"- spread, people beguiled by the tale of a straight-talking wild Aborigine man who could spin a yarn, and he soon became a storyteller in Australian schools before embarking on his globetrotting career.

He came to Britain three years ago on a trip arranged by the Commonwealth Institute, was due to perform in London and Bristol only over a four month period, and ended up staying.

Today he travels with partner and agent Jane Singleton, from Surrey, who arranged his visit to the North-East, which ends on Friday, although he hopes to be back later in the year. He has been dividing his time between Middlesbrough and staying with friends in Darlington.

The visit, during which he tells stories, paints his face, teaches traditional dance and gives audiences the chance to experience Aborigine art, was arranged by the Creative Partnership Tees Valley organisation and funded by the British Arts Council.

Although he likes the North-East and its "friendly" people, Francis is forthright about what he sees as worrying signs for its younger generations.

"Kids on the streets do not receive guidance from their elders. The Aborigine way is for the elders to offer guidance, which creates respect. The problem over here is kids are exposed to peer pressure from other kids, who are teaching them bad habits. It is the blind leading the blind. Those exerting the peer pressure are not setting a good example and family unity is rapidly breaking down."

He is also exasperated by the British way - and he includes some sections of the media in his criticism - of appearing to take joy in unfairly criticising achievement.

"The English way is to be modest whereas the Aborigine way is to boast about your abilities. I object to people who I hear calling other people losers. Anyone calling someone a loser is a loser themselves. But you can't blame the kids, you have to blame their background. It is the parents' responsibility," he says.

And he also believes that, as a society, Britain stifles children's imagination. "Aborigine children are taught to open their imaginations. We have no word for artist because everyone is an artist. In England, schools teach too much academic stuff. It is too heavy. All children have creative ideas and what I do is fire their imaginations, which builds self-esteem. Self-esteem is important."

Facing up to home truths is not to everyone's liking, particularly in reserved Britain - Francis acknowledges that - but he feels that he usually wins his audiences over. "I tell it how it is, I tell the truth in an open, honest way which comes from the heart.

"Kids don't like people talking down to them. I don't mollycoddle them. Young people are very good at detecting if you are real.

"When I walk in there is a nervous giggle but within ten or 15 minutes, by telling it straight and using humour - I like the way the English can laugh at themselves - I have won them over. Ninety per cent of people like me but a few do not and I think that is down to fear, although most people's fears are unfounded," he says.

He also has some interesting views of the Englishman abroad, including an insight into favourite son of Teesside, the Middlesbrough-born explorer Captain Cook, who helped open up the southern hemisphere.

Once the white man arrived in Australia, the Aborigines, who taught respect for the environment, found themselves hounded out by aggressive settlers who only wanted to exploit the land. But Francis feels Cook rose above that.

"You have to respect the environment," he says, "That worked for us for 176,000 years before the white man came - our rivers would not have been teeming with fish if it had not. Our first bad influence was when the British came. It was two vastly different cultures coming together.

"But Captain Cook was not a bad man. He said something like 'I look at these natives and see that they are simple people, with little in the way of material possessions and clothes, and see that they are happy' and I worry what our intrusion into their lives will do.'"

What it did was all but destroy an ancient way of life. Francis Firebrace is helping keep it alive.