To 17-year-old Blake Ellis, Aboriginal elder Uncle Wes is the "the biggest role model in Mount Druitt".

Blake Ellis' childhood was hard and as a boy he sought refuge with Uncle Wes and his family.

"I was only young when I was staying with him and spent more time with him than my own family," he said.

As Uncle Wes puts it: "They've got to have someone they can talk to, someone they can depend on."

Wes Marne is 91 and for the past 30 years, he has been an Aboriginal elder in western Sydney.

"I have responsibility for everything, everything whatsoever," he said.

He is an advocate for "his people" at Centrelink, the Department of Housing, Community Services, Juvenile Justice and he is a regular visitor to young Aboriginal men in prison.

"Just to let them know there's somebody here who cares," he said.

"I suppose there's a lot of mongrel things I've done in my time that I could have gone to jail for but no, I'm out here."

Michael Waites, 25, has been in and out of jail "numerous times".

"Ever since I turned 18 I've probably been eight times," he said.

"I've never had that person to put me on the right track."

But a meeting with Uncle Wes when he was in prison had a profound impact.

"That made my day, him coming there," he said.

"I could feel the spirit inside me."

Uncle Wes conducted a smoking ceremony which Mr Waites says "cleared my mind."

"It more or less gave me the strength to get out of jail."

Sorry, this video has expired Uncle Wes reflects on a good life ( Philippa McDonald )

As a child, Wes Marne lived tribally on the banks of a river in southern Queensland.

"I still think my happiest times were when I lived on the river in the old tin camp," he said.

"We didn't have to worry about much at all, we fished and we hunted and we swam."

At the age of 10, his family were moved to a reserve in northern New South Wales.

"I never had much education. I left school when I was 11 and I never started til I was 10."

At 11, Wes Marne went where ever he could find work.

His first job was carrying water to ring barkers.

"I was a water boy. I used to run around giving everyone a drink of water and it was no easy matter, chasing a lot of men though the bush carrying a hessian water bag about, but anyway it was a living," he said.

He went on to be a boxer, losing most of his teeth in the ring, then there was the "back breaking" work at a tannery, a chicken factory and picking and packaging tobacco all over the country.

"A lot of people didn't want to give us work," he said.

"When we got work we were always the last one to be put on and the first one to be put off."

Uncle Wes says he moved to Sydney to give his children a better education.

"I thought my children would be better off, and it was hard from the word go," he said.

He has outlived four of his children. One baby died from cot death, two were killed in a car crash, another drowned.

"You don't have to be Aboriginal to realise it's a hard old world out there, a hard old world," he said.

But Uncle Wes remains committed to helping his people.

"Even in the night, 1.00 or 2.00 in the morning, you get a call; 'Uncle Wes can you come up? my old man is bashing me here'."

When he is not helping out in the community or teaching his culture in schools, detention centres and prisons, Uncle Wes enjoys a yarn with the locals in Mount Druitt Plaza.

He says it is all about doing something for his people

"You can't retire, once you're an elder you can't retire," he said.