KEY POINTS:
A woman stands alone on one side of Molesworth St. She says her name is Bobbie and holds a sign saying, "I support the police."
She faces the main throng waiting for the Tuhoe hikoi, a solitary note of defiance.
"If I had a can, I'd throw it
at you," one man yells at her.
Bobbie says she doesn't believe the police would have acted without needing to.
"There's a lot of publicity given to the protesters at the moment. But there's a lot of Kiwis that probably think the way I do."
One woman asks her, "Why are you supporting the police? You just want to get us angry, here."
They looked angry - men with tight faces and tattooed arms in the road wearing bandannas and balaclavas and carrying taiaha. A brown pitbull dog wearing a muzzle sat quivering against the legs of his master, periodically itching and barking at people.
They wait for three hours for the arrival of the main group - who left Ruatoki on Monday, travelling through Taupo, Palmerston North and Levin.
One of the men from a civil rights group tells Bobbie she's wrong, that she'd feel differently if only she knew better.
Freedom of speech is alive and well on the hikoi.
They have come from near and far for this, from Kaikohe and Kilbirnie. Heather, who is Ngapuhi, came from her work at the railway station across the road: "I heard the drums and then I came."
When the main group arrives at 12.30pm, everybody heads down Lambton Quay chanting, "When Tuhoe rights are under attack, fight back."
One woman says, "We're peacemakers."
The placards say things like "Tamariki not Terrorists" and "State terrorists kidnapped my friends".
Others carry simpler messages such as, "Helen Clark Sux!"
Maori Affairs Minister Parekura Horomia comes out to "front up" just as the tail end of the hikoi disappears round the corner.
"I'm not sure if they're going down or are coming back, or what," he says.
Labour's Shane Jones also emerges.
"It's reasonable for people to come to Parliament, ventilate, yell and do the haka, and we should not shirk from what they have to say," he says. "But sure as you and I stand here, the rest of the world is getting on with their busy, cluttered, satisfied lives."
When they return, the Tuhoe marchers cheer for Green MP Keith Locke and Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples.
They jeer and shout down Labour's Nanaia Mahuta, partly because she doesn't use the megaphone, so they shout that they cannot hear her. They call out words like "traitor" and "sell-out". They boo Mr Horomia.
When the politicians are done, they try to tempt out more.
"Anneeeeetttte", one man coos in a sing-song voice, calling for Police Minister Annette King. "Tuhoe's pissed off, Annette. Come down here."
Then it's time to go up the road to police headquarters, where they hope Police Commissioner Howard Broad will see them.
The leader yells: "Let's go invade his whare."
Up at police headquarters three lines of police wait with varying sizes of Movember sprouts on upper lips.
There's a spate of glaring and thinned lips before they break into a haka.
A few hours later, police issue a statement saying the hikoi was "incident free" apart from one man who was stopped north of Paraparaumu for driving on the wrong side of the road.
