Finola met my Great-great-aunt Jess (yeah, so many ‘greats’) when Jess was old. She lived in Auckland, too, and was really famous for campaigning about women’s rights and stuff like that. ‘It’s not just now that girls can do anything, Ailsa,’ Finola told me once. ‘Girls and women have always been able to do anything.’

Finola had rung Tipene a few days back to say she was coming on the march. ‘Not in the Patu Squad. I’ll go on the main march with you lot. You’ll get lost otherwise.’

The Patu Squad is mainly young protestors. (‘Patu’ is a type of club used by Maori warriors in the old times.) They’ve marched and demonstrated at a lot of games. Most of them wear motorbike helmets, and pad their jackets with cardboard and things like that, because they try to break into the rugby grounds, and sometimes they’ve ended up in fights with police or tour supporters. I said once at home how it must be exciting to do something like that, how I’d like to— Dad stuck his finger almost in my face and went ‘You are not joining any Patu Squad!’

In Wellington, a whole crowd of protestors tried to march into the grounds of Parliament Buildings. The police stopped them. There was shoving and punching, and the TV showed women crying, a man staggering with a big gash on his forehead, people lying crumpled on the ground. Mum feels sorry for the police; they’re just trying to do their jobs. I suppose so, but if anyone tries to shove me . . .

We unloaded our stuff into the cabins. I grabbed the top bunk. (Actually, Mum and Dad told me they were grabbing the bottom bunks.) We piled into our car and Finola’s car, and she took us all to a fish-and-chip shop a couple of kilometres away. It was crowded, too. A bunch of guys about John’s age watched us come in. They looked like rugby supporters (don’t ask me why I thought that), and you could tell they were wondering if we were anti-tour weirdoes. But Mum and Nana Florence started yakking to them, and one of them turned out to have an uncle just a couple of valleys away from Waimoana. We all said ‘See you’ and ‘Good luck’ to one another when we left, though I didn’t feel sure what their idea of good luck might be.

I climbed up into my bunk pretty early that night. Funny how sitting in a car seat for half a day makes you feel tired.