The Gold Coast-born indigenous artist was working in the storeroom of a fruit shop in Tweed Heads as the then-Prime Minister issued the emotional and long-awaited national apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008.

“Bulls***,” muttered the white man working next to him, shooting dark looks in Goompi’s direction.

“I tried to ignore it,” says Goompi, born Stephen Larcombe at Southport Hospital.

“He kept going on repeating it so I just snapped. I was ready to fight him but I just jumped on my pushy and rode home. I knew I had to get myself out of there before I did something I would regret later.”

But when Goompi arrived home, there was a far more unpleasant surprise waiting for him.

He found his mother in the kitchen, listening to the same radio broadcast, tears streaming down her face.

“Stephen,” she said, “I have something to tell you.”

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It was then he found out how close his mother came to becoming a part of that lost generation.

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“She told me that when she was a little girl, she and her three sisters lived on Sullivan Street in Tweed Heads South and this flash, black car used to rock up all the time. And everyone knew back then that it was a government car.

“When they’d see it drive up, her mum — my grandmother — used to push them all out the back door. The elder sisters would grab them all and hide them under the house.

“They were trying to take them because they had a white father and a black mother.

“It happened three times. On the fourth time, a white neighbour ran down to the river, where my grandfather was a professional fisherman and warned him.

“He came back to the house with an oar and said ‘if you ever come back here I will hunt you down, every single one of you who try to take my kids away’. He said, ‘I feed them, I clothe them and they go to school — everything you want. Don’t ever come back here again’. And they didn’t.

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“My mum was lucky she had a white dad that the government listened to. The Stolen Generation are not a story from long ago and far away. It was only yesterday and it was right here.”

And yet the most shocking part of the story is still to come.

“I don’t think we should have a Sorry Day,” says Goompi.

“We should have a remembrance day, a day to acknowledge what happened — but the word ‘sorry’ seems to be a real trigger.

“Rudd did the right thing, the government needed to apologise for what their predecessors in the political system did and acknowledge the suffering of the Stolen Generation — although no apology can heal the pain and torment those people suffered. But the way it has been portrayed is that the whole country needs to apologise, and that’s not true.

“The title of Sorry Day made things worse in a way — just like that guy next to me at the fruit shop, it made people angry and it was taken as they were apologising for something they didn’t do. No Aboriginal people asked the public of this country to say sorry. Just to understand and acknowledge that this happened in this country and be compassionate — not to feel blame.

“It ended up turning a positive into something of a negative.”

You don’t need to be Aboriginal to understand Goompi’s point.

Remember the Commonwealth Games? There were two indigenous stories there — the official role of local tribes in the opening and closing ceremonies, and the unofficial Stolenwealth protests outside Carrara Stadium.

While coverage of the first was positive, much commentary was not. As for the second, it was all negative.

“The guys in the ceremony were my relatives. A lot of people said it was boring and ‘why does everything have to be all about Aboriginals these days’. Anytime attention is called to us, there are always negative views or opinions.

“As for the protests, that was tough. There was a lot of negativity, even from some Aboriginal people. But the fact is that we all have a right to say what we need to say — the hard part is getting people to listen.”

But for Goompi, there are some powerful ears turning in his direction.

After first picking up a paintbrush in 2002, his works have now been bought by Danish royalty, America’s CIA and the Gold Coast’s own coffee king Kenton Campbell.

His large canvases now fetch far into the five figures and are bought as investments, but the reward for Goompi is far more than financial.

While his mother’s people descended from the Gurreng Gurreng tribe near Maryborough, his father, who left the family when Goompi was 10 years old, was Australian-born but of Scottish and French heritage.

Growing up on the Gold Coast, he says he was never sure exactly who he was.

“I’d get bullied for having tan skin by some of the white kids, but then some indigenous kids would call me whitey. I didn’t know who or what I was,” he says.

“When I was in high school at Palm Beach Currumbin I happened to meet these indigenous dancers, Nunuccal Kunjiel, through my cousins. It was like fate.

“We started talking and they taught me culture and how to dance like our ancestors. It just flicked a switch in me. I never again questioned who I was. I found my culture, my identity.

“I ended up quitting school to dance full time. We used to dance at the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. When that group sort of fell apart, I took the next step, by starting my own troupe.

“At the start my new troupe Bundjalung Kunjiel did mostly community events, then at one point we were invited to go to Las Vegas where we were going to be in a tribal show. It was unreal. It was like a fairytale — although not exactly with the happy ending we wanted.

“The show didn’t happen — although we did perform at some amazing parties full of Las Vegas royalty, one was hosted by Elvis’s ex-girlfriend — and when I came home I was sort of thinking, what’s next?”

Goompi says the answer came when he saw his cousins painting — and decided to give it a go as well.

He submitted his first artwork to a gallery in Byron Bay and sold it in one week.

“I went down to the gallery and happened to be there at the same time that the buyer was picking up my piece,” he says.

“Her own mother had just died and on her deathbed told this woman that she was in fact Aboriginal. She was still in the midst of processing what this all meant and that was part of her decision to buy my art. For us to then meet each other was just amazing. Again, it felt like fate was pointing me in this path.

“It wasn’t always easy. Because I’m not a full-blooded Aborigine, I felt not every gallery would want to promote me. So I just promoted myself and started building a reputation, plus I had great connections through my dancing.

“Now I’m at the point where I have so much demand I can’t keep up. I was just named as a finalist in the Paddington Art Prize and my work has hung alongside some amazing artists over the years, including Emily Kngwarreye and Ronnie Tjampitjinpa.

“I was involved in a Romanian exhibition held at the Sky Tower in Bucharest named The Dreaming Exhibition, which was one of the biggest selling Aboriginal art exhibitions in Europe to date.

“One of my artworks about the Brolgas dancing is hanging in the CIA headquarters in America and Princess Benedikte of Denmark — Crown Prince Frederik’s aunt — has an artwork of mine about skin lore and tribal marriage.”

Goompi says international patrons often have a much stronger interest in indigenous culture and artwork than domestic buyers, with one big exception.

“I think in Australia we’re all still coming to terms with who we were and who we are, whereas overseas people are just fascinated by this ancient culture.

“However, one of my biggest buyers is (Zarraffas founder and CEO) Kenton Campbell. He just happened to wander by a half hour before my exhibition opening at Gallery One last year.

“He started talking about his love for all cultures and fell in love with the artworks, purchasing four straight away.

“He just finished hanging them in the new Zarraffas headquarters which is opening soon. It’s awesome to have a connection with such an inspiring person who sees their dreams and works hard to achieve them, no matter what.”

He says the importance of indigenous culture was something also understood by Australia’s favourite son, the Crocodile Hunter.

Goompi and his troupe opened last year’s Steve Irwin gala dinner in Beverly Hills, dancing before a crowd of celebrities in honour of the man who sought to conserve the environment their ancestors called home.

Goompi says it’s a message he tries to share in his greater role as a cultural ambassador.

Whether it’s through art or dance, visiting schools or businesses, at home or overseas, he says learning about indigenous culture is the key to a better future and unified Australia.

“Culture is the key not just to me but to my people, my family. And my family includes all of Australia. We all live in the same house — the same country. We all love it. The more we understand each other, the better our lives will be.

“There is so much fear and misinformation.

“It’s easy to think the Gold Coast has little indigenous connection, but in fact it’s huge. You only have to look at the names of the suburbs to see that.

“In fact, there is a native title claim on the Coast, but it’s important to remember what that means. It does not mean people are going to lose anything. It’s just that it will give local Kombumerri custodians more power to negotiate matters on their tribal land and to give more access to manage the land.

“Of the tribes who once lived here, one of them is completely gone. There was a book, written by a white man, which told about how a group of men in Beaudesert saddled up their horses and rode down into the northern parts of the Gold Coast, killing every black person in sight. We’re only talking just over a century ago.

“White settlement in Australia is still new in the grand scheme of things, what’s important is that we give each other the time to listen, acknowledge and understand. Things will never go back to the way that they were, but they can’t necessarily keep going in the same direction either.”

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Goompi says it’s for this reason that he loves visiting schools on the Gold Coast, where he is regularly invited to teach art, dance and culture.

“It’s not just the kids either, it’s the teachers too. There’s this real thirst to learn and communicate. Sometimes I do workshops just with the teachers themselves.

“It’s amazing to me that indigenous culture is being taught to this new generation. Maybe things really will change.”

Meanwhile, he continues to unearth his own family’s sad story, researching a time when change went too far, too fast.

“My great-great-grandmother was married in one of Queensland’s first white-sanctioned mixed marriages in 1904,” he says.

“Aborigines weren’t allowed to marry each other but no one else wanted to marry them since they were considered the bottom of the barrel. They were allowed to marry the South Sea Islanders who had been brought over as slaves for cane farmers — but first they had to ask for permission from the white governor.

“So Dolly McFarlane and Jack Lena were sanctioned to marry. I just can’t imagine how strange it would have been for them — it was against tribal law to marry just anyone. Settlement meant they were no longer on their lands with their people, nobody could understand each other because they didn’t even share a common language. Add to that all of the other horrible experiences that happened back then.

“I’ve tried to think about how they felt but it’s just too big to put my head around. There were generations that felt shame to be Aboriginal.

“My grandmother used to get mad at my mother if she told anyone she was Aboriginal. She would tell her to just say she was Indian. You know, her kids were almost stolen from her, it’s no wonder she wanted to hide the truth.

“But, as they say, the truth can set you free. That’s what I’ve found through dancing and art and Aboriginal culture. Freedom to find out who I am.”