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Separated from her Aboriginal mother at two years of age, Lowitja O'Donoghue remembers being sent by missionaries to stay weekends with white Christian families - being tucked into bed and kissed goodnight. But it is not a fond memory. "I hated it," she says. "I'd never been kissed like that. I was brought up in a church institution and had no concept of the nuclear family at all."

That is why this no-nonsense champion of indigenous rights chose not to have children. "How could I be a mother?" she asks. "I have no experience of it. And I never really wanted to get married." But she did – to Gordon Smart, a white medical orderly she met at the Adelaide Repatriation Hospital in 1964. "Smartie was already married with six adult kids back then so I told him he had to discharge his responsibilities to his family first before I'd even consider it. Then I kept him waiting for years and years. We finally got married in the Flinders Ranges. He was a good man."

A widow for the past 22 years, O'Donoghue was in some discomfort when she arrived at the Charcoal Lane restaurant in Fitzroy. The 82-year-old had fallen heavily that morning at her city hotel, hurting her right shoulder, so now nothing on the menu appealed, which posed a possible first for this segment (Skipping Lunch With...?).

Reluctantly she settles on an entree-sized Morton Bay terrine but as time passes, the indigenous warrior in Lowitja O'Donoghue slowly emerges, bruises ignored, snacking on some complimentary vegetables and speaking with remarkable frankness about her extraordinary life. Even her personal relationships are an open book.

"I am going through a situation at the moment," she says of a male admirer. "Well he was a good friend anyhow. A musician who plays at the church. I told him to get out of my life!" I venture to inquire whether a second marriage would be a possibility in her 80s. "Not to him," she replies then, after a moment's musing, dismisses the notion entirely. "No, once is enough."

In the lead-up to our luncheon, fellow Aboriginal leader Marcia Langton had apologised to commentator Andrew Bolt for calling him a racist on the ABC program Q&A. Bolt, who disputes the concept of a "Stolen Generation", has often cited O'Donoghue as evidence, saying she told him she had been "removed", not stolen. Today she says that "deep down, I am Stolen Generation, we're first-generation kids" but says it is a term she tries to avoid. "I keep telling our people to forget Sorry Day and Stolen Generation, we should be on a journey of healing. But the majority wants to stick with it and a lot [of the reason] behind that is compensation, I suppose."

Even so, O'Donoghue has lingering doubts about the national apology which Prime Minister Rudd delivered amid emotional scenes in the federal parliament in 2008. "At the beginning I said I can forgive but I can't forget," she says, "but more and more I am questioning the forgiveness bit. I have got more and more angry at the church because of how they felt about my Aboriginal culture – that it was no good, that it was pagan."

O'Donoghue was puzzled at the Marcia Langton apology. "I don't think Marcia needed to make it, really. I could see Marcia was angry but she really controlled herself. If I'd been on the program I'd have come out strongly against that man."

O'Donoghue was named Australian of the Year in 1984 but only after a week of deliberation on her part. "It is the longest anyone has taken to accept," she says. "I knew it would cause real trouble with my mob but I accepted in the hope that the date for Australia Day would be changed."

Sure enough, when she returned to Adelaide after accepting the position, there was huge media group waiting at the airport. "The press told me an Aboriginal woman named Mary Williams, an old sparring partner of mine, had said I was a 'Judas' for accepting the position. I told them not to get carried away -- Mary disagreed with everything I said and did – and vice-versa – but she and I would be together the next day to raise an Aboriginal flag at the new Festival Theatre. Mary's gone now."

O'Donoghue is still pushing for a different date for the national celebrations. "If someone tells me 'happy Australia Day' I tell them: 'you mean Invasion Day'," she says.

Little wonder that Paul Keating adores this funny and feisty pot-stirrer – as prime minister, he wanted her to be the first female governor-general but O'Donoghue turned him down. She is critical of the woman who did achieve that distinction, Quentin Bryce, who is an old friend. "Quentin had been Governor of Queensland," says O'Donoghue. "I don't believe in a governor of a state going on to being governor-general – it's not on. But that's what she did. Quentin asked me many times to stay at Government House overnight but I said no, that's the Queen's residence and I'm a republican."

Despite all that, O'Donoghue has met the Queen several times and, in a delegation including indigenous campaigner Pat Dodson, has also been invited into the British House of Lords. "Pat was stopped at security because of his hat," she says. "They asked if it had religious significance and he didn't know what to say – so they took it. Poor old Patrick. No one recognised him, sitting there without his hat. I told him: 'You should have told them you were a rabbi'."

Our lunch at Charcoal Lane was arranged via the Lowitja Institute, the Aboriginal health-care body of which O'Donoghue is patron. She blames the Stolen Generation years for much of the ill-health among her people. "[Those who were taken] did not have the opportunities and often fell into the category of street people. Next thing we know they have all kinds of health problems. What the Institute is doing is researching the causes."

The sign next to the restaurant door explains that Charcoal Lane is "part of an exciting program of Mission Australia, in partnership with [among others] the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service" and there are indeed some culturally eye-catching dishes – "wallaby sirloin" was one and a pavlova with "strawberry gum tree dust" was another. However I go the orthodox path - oyster blade steak.

Lowitja O'Donoghue was born (supposedly in 1932) at Agnes Creek in central Australia to Aboriginal mother, Lily, and Irish father Tom O'Donoghue. She was removed to the United Aborigines Mission in Oodnadatta in 1934 where her name was changed to Lois. She was not to see her mother again for more than 30 years. Her parents separated in 1940 after Tom O'Donoghue was convicted and fined under a law forbidding white men from "consorting" with Aboriginal women. "Lois" spent a good deal of her childhood at the Colebrook Home for Children at Quorn, in the Flinders Ranges. "I was a rebellious child," she says. "I spoke out, wanted to know who I was, where my mother was. The matron told me almost every week that I would not make anything of my life, that I wasn't any good." Her personal records, such as they were, disappeared and she says it was only a couple of years ago that she obtained a birth certificate. But the birthday – 1 August 1932 – is just guesswork. "There were 50 kids in the home," she says, "so they spread out birthdays to make sure there were some celebrated every month. I was given the First of August. And I think 1932 is probably close enough."

I ask O'Donoghue about the surname she still carries, the "white" side of her family. "Well my mother didn't have a surname," she says. "My father and his brother Mick had two leases on farming properties in South Australia. I didn't see my father after he left. There are O'Donoghues in South Australia who are going out of their way now to make contact with me but they have had that opportunity – they've been there all this time. I did a big journey up there a few years back to find out more about me but there is nothing in the records."

In contrast, her record of achievements is outstanding. Australian of the Year, OA and CBE, appointed a Dame of the Order of St Gregory by Pope John Paul II. She is the first Aboriginal Australian to address the United Nations General Assembly. Naturally such an extraordinary life has generated a mountain of personal records which – to the horror of her friends – she had planned to "shred and burn". O'Donoghue changed her mind earlier this year, taking the 50 boxes of records to Canberra where the National Library eagerly took possession. It was a young Aboriginal boy who managed to sway the normally unswayable Lowitja. "He asked me during a school visit what I was doing with my stuff. When I told him I planned to burn it he was horrified and told me: 'But Aunty, that's how we learn.' So I decided not to."