If you visit Eden in the far south of New South Wales and ask who the most recognisable figure in town is, chances are they will tell you, "Uncle Ossie".

"I just remember that first vision of seeing him, in his signature hat, and his incredible warmth," local filmmaker and journalist Toni Houston said.

Uncle Ossie Cruse is 83. He belongs to the generation of battle-hardened political warriors who fought through the '60s, '70s and '80s for Aboriginal rights.

"I wanted to capture [his] story because it hasn't been captured, and I thought it had to be," Ms Houston said.

"He is getting older and is one of our last great Aboriginal patriarchs."

'They thought we were dirty and filthy'

Sorry, this video has expired Advice: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the following video contains images of people who have died. Uncle Ossie Cruse dealt with racism for much of his life.

Born in the Aboriginal section of a hospital in Orbost, Victoria in 1933, Uncle Ossie was a Koori kid growing up in an overtly racist community.

Uncle Ossie recalls the segregation they had to live with in those days.

"White people always thought that black people were dirty and filthy and unhygienic," he told Australian Story.

"In Eden they used to call us half-castes, quarter-castes.

"They wouldn't allow you in the same picture theatres. They wouldn't allow you to swim in the swimming pools and stay in hotels or motels."

Filmmaker Toni Houston with BJ Cruse in Eden, NSW. ( Australian Story: Marc Smith )

Uncle Ossie's family led an itinerant lifestyle, doing seasonal work and moving around the country living in bark huts.

When he left school at age 11, Uncle Ossie worked in the bean fields, cut timber in the saw mills, and travelled north on a boat to Torres Strait to work as a pearl diver.

At the same time he started drinking and later he hung out at a pub in Redfern.

"I was a member of a gang of young fellas that all drank, we called ourselves The Beenleigh Boys, because we drank Beenleigh rum, and to get into it you had to drink a pint of rum without taking it away from your lips," he said.

"Very few people knew that I was pretty well an alcoholic.

'He changed overnight'

A young Uncle Ossie Cruse. ( Supplied )

Uncle Ossie was on a dangerous, downward spiral. Then, swiftly and unexpectedly, his life turned around.

"Uncle would agree that it was God and Beryl who saved his life and gave his whole life shape and meaning," Ms Houston said.

Ossie met Beryl when she was 14 and he was 15; they married in Nowra in 1952 and had three children.

Ten years later, the American evangelist Billy Graham visited Australia and Uncle Ossie went to hear him speak.

"He just changed overnight," Uncle Ossie's son BJ Cruse said.

"He stopped swearing, he stopped drinking and he became a very peaceful man."

The quiet leader

After the 1967 referendum, where 90 per cent of Australians voted to amend the constitution to include Aboriginal people, Uncle Ossie became more politically active in Aboriginal rights.

"The first issue wasn't land rights; it was never land rights, it was civil rights," he said.

Michael Anderson, co-founder of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, pays tribute to the qualities shown by Ossie Cruse at the time.

"We needed leadership and people like Ossie Cruse stood up and took up that mantle of leadership and they certainly paved the way for many of us young ones," he said.

"He had that capacity to have politicians come to the table. He had that capacity to sit them down and they'd listen."

Taking Aboriginal rights global

Former prime minister Gough Whitlam, Uncle Ossie Cruse and Michael Anderson are interviewed prior to leaving for their tour to drum up support for a treaty. ( Supplied: The Keeping Place, Jigamy Farm/ Juno Gemes )

In 1982, together with former prime minister Gough Whitlam, Mr Anderson and Uncle Ossie set off on an epic tour of post-colonial African countries, to drum up support for a treaty for Aboriginal people in Australia.

Uncle Ossie took his advocacy all the way to the United Nations and became a member of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples.

"It was our submission, really, that sparked off the Declaration of Rights for Indigenous Peoples," he said.

"We were getting closer and closer to things happening as a whole and as a people."

Michael Anderson, Uncle Ossie Cruse, President Julius Nyerere and former prime minister Gough Whitlam. ( Supplied: The Keeping Place, Jigamy Farm )

Aboriginal MP Linda Burney said that as a member of the Federal Parliament, the lesson she can take from Uncle Ossie is "quiet leadership".

"It is that understanding that persuasion is not about thumping the table and yelling at people. Persuasion is often long and arduous, quiet and persistent," she said.

A grassroots leader

Sorry, this video has expired Uncle Ossie Cruse hopes people from all over the world will see and appreciate the Bundian Way.

Uncle Ossie is no longer the globe-trotting advocate for Aboriginal rights. Sadly his much-loved wife Beryl died in 2012.

But he is still as active as ever, spending his days — and sometimes his nights — working tirelessly in the Eden community.

He visits families in trouble, counsels inmates at Cooma Correctional Centre, is helping build a youth camp and ferries kids to his church.

One of his biggest projects is championing a local wonder of the region: an ancient Aboriginal pathway called the Bundian Way.

It stretches about 380 kilometres from the Snowy Mountains down to Eden's Twofold Bay.

The local Aboriginal Land Council is employing Koori rangers to build the infrastructure along the start of the Bundian Way, to help them reconnect with their history and culture, and to make the pathway accessible to walkers and tourists.

Uncle Ossie sees the Bundian Way, which has only recently been rediscovered, as a symbolic pathway of peace.

"We hope that will bring a lot of healing to the reconciliation process too and we will be working together and seeing that we have a legacy left for our children's children, for their future," he said.

In May, Uncle Ossie made the trek to Uluru to attend the First Nations National Constitutional Convention. There, he reconnected with friends from 50 years ago.

Ms Burney believes Uncle Ossie and those he fought alongside should not be forgotten.

"Uncle Ossie Cruse is a man now in his early 80s. Many of his generation are no longer with us. Many of them have passed on. There's not many left. But what a legacy they gave us," she said.

"They saw some terrible things, and experienced some terrible things.

"And we should be forever grateful for them."