KEY POINTS:
It was almost midnight in a neighbourhood bar just outside Sydney when two of New Zealand's most notorious exports turned again to an ugly violence.
Mother and son, Maria and Prince Brown, can be seen on CCTV footage from the Smithfield RSL Club muscling their way into the bar, facing down a man wearing a jacket bearing the patch of the Gypsy Jokers gang.
The Browns are with three others, and they cluster around their intended victim. Someone - it's hard to see who in the blur of action - swings an arm and the Joker bends double. A kick this time, and he falls to the floor.
As the victim lies on the floor, arms around his head for protection, Prince Brown can be seen kicking him three times in the head "with increasing force, ending with what appears to be a running kick", an official report describes. Prince Brown will say his part in the assault was "self defence", a claim found to be "untenable".
Before the assault in the middle of last year, the tiled floor is clean. After, it is covered in blood, although it is hard to see whose blows caused the bleeding.
Maria Brown hands the Joker's jacket to her son, who drops it and tramples it underfoot.
For Maria and Prince Brown, it was a typical mother-and-son outing. But for the New South Wales police, it was the point at which their patience finally ran out with a pair of Kiwis who had claimed Australia as home.
The Browns have been exiled from a nation whose roots are those of exiles; criminals banished to the world's largest island.
They are among the latest New Zealanders banned from Australia - a growing number who have fallen to increasingly aggressive attempts by Australian authorities to be rid of unwelcome visitors.
They have just lost their latest appeal against deportation and are due back in New Zealand at the beginning of March. When the deportation order was handed down NSW police commissioner Andrew Scipione declared: "People who do not respect the laws of this country do not deserve to enjoy the privilege of living here."
And now they are heading back to New Zealand.
Maria Brown moved to Australia in 1997. Although born in Samoa, Brown used the passport of her adopted New Zealand after gaining citizenship. Brown moved to the suburb of Airds, southwest of Sydney, where she came to dominate the local criminal scene, styling herself as the Queen of Airds. A year later, her son Prince joined her from Auckland.
It took 18 months for each of them to appear before the courts. Maria Brown faced drug and stolen property charges in 1999, and Prince Brown a slew of charges in the juvenile courts a year later. Evidence of these and other convictions were presented at an appeal against deportation this month.
Their records depict a lifestyle of crime - a persistent and unrelenting pattern of behaviour that, in the words of witnesses, terrorised an entire suburb.
The pair tried to appeal their deportation order to Australia's Administrative Appeals Tribunal. This is the evidence given by police and other authorities about why they should go. The Browns deny all that follows, including evidence supported by CCTV footage, extensive witness testimony and even the crimes to which they have previously pleaded guilty in court.
In 1999, Maria Brown was accused of being a drug dealer at the local shopping centre by a woman with her 9-year-old son. She punched the woman, then spat in the face of a police officer who intervened.
The accusation proved true - over the next few years she was convicted of dealing drugs. Police claimed Maria Brown was already a significant player in the local criminal scene. In a power struggle between the Aboriginal and Pacific Island communities for control of the drug trade in Airds, Maria Brown led the latter group.
Prince Brown, although a minor, was already known to police. At 13, he assaulted a 38-year-old man, leaving him with facial fractures and broken ribs. His most serious assault took place when he was 16.
He entered his victim's property, punched him in the face then dragged him to the ground where he kicked and punched the man into unconsciousness. The victim spent a week in hospital, and ended up on a disability benefit as a result of the attack.
The family couldn't stay away from trouble. In 2004, Maria Brown struck an undercover police officer in the face, then hunted for a weapon with which to hit him. She stated she meant to kill him with the initial blow, a comment she refused to expand on under questioning.
Police interest was such that in 2005, after Maria Brown complained of cockroaches in her state house, officers posing as housing department staff visited and installed hidden cameras to film drug dealing. Police later spoke of her son Benjamin, 11, waking his mother so she could carry out a drug deal - it is believed that happened during the surveillance.
By now, Prince Brown was considered an adult in the law, and earned his first prison sentence. Already, his police file was filled with intelligence reports alleging a number of assaults and involvement in drug dealing. Like his mother, he denied any wrongdoing.
Police intelligence reports also aligned Prince Brown with the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang (OMCG), and reported claims he "ruled Airds". His violence extended to weapons - in one case he was accused of carrying a .22 rifle while carrying out an assault.
Maria Brown was in court again in February 2006, convicted of stalking and threatening a female police officer. She denied the claim, saying the officer had "made up" the allegations.
There were other allegations - including striking a 14-year-old boy with a baseball bat. The complaint was withdrawn, although Maria Brown was then accused of threatening her alleged victims into backing down.
Remarkably, Maria Brown was never sent to prison. She later accepted before the tribunal she had received "lenient" treatment, but apparently interpreted her good fortune as a sign she had done little wrong. When quizzed about her offending, she said others had committed worse crimes. She had, for example, "never committed murder or paedophilia".
Prince Brown made a similar statement, telling the tribunal Australia needed to deal with the "murderers, rapists and paedophiles roaming the streets" before trying to remove someone who was trying to change, and take care of his family.
In 2006, after being evicted from the state house she had lived in since arriving in Australia, Maria Brown and family found new ways to put a roof over their heads. The Campbelltown housing department office received complaints she had stood over an elderly resident, forcibly occupying his home until he moved out.
There was "countless allegations [about] aggressive, abusive and threatening behaviour towards other tenants, housing contractors and other members of the public". She denied forcing her way into homes, saying "friends" helped her because she was homeless.
Housing department officers spoke of complaints by tenants, including those who left the area to get away from the Browns.
One had seen a child being "bashed with a bat", but refused to speak with police while still living locally. Another, the tribunal heard, had telephoned the department to say she had "abandoned her home", had "fled in fear of her life" and would not go to police because if Maria Brown found out "she would kill her".
A department memo notes "tenants are continually requesting priority transfers, abandoning their homes and living in fear". "We have several major fires and home invasions", with claims they were carried out by Maria and Prince Brown. There were 63 such reports on housing department computers, recorded over three years.
In their time in Australia, the Browns never worked, never paid taxes, and lived in state houses.
Police intelligence files, produced for the tribunal, claimed she would abuse people in the community suspected of supplying information to police, calling them "dogs". Locals reported assaults but refused to make formal complaints "usually because of fear of retribution".
One report stated that suppliers and buyers were "bashed if they did not use the Browns for their drug supply".
An intimidation campaign led to one man's car and home being firebombed. One of her children was charged - unsuccessfully - over the incident. She was also accused of intimidating witnesses in the murder trial of Kiwi John Frederick Thompson, 24, who was found guilty last year of beating his girlfriend to death.
Prince Brown, too, was the subject to police intelligence reports. There was 77 reports, detailing alleged drug dealing, violence (including firearms), robbery, intimidation, home invasion, gang crime, receiving stolen goods, breaking and entering and public disorder offences. Last year alone, there were 23 reports, including intimidation of victims and witnesses.
A police intelligence report given to the tribunal stated that Maria Brown has "no fear or respect for authority", shown by 10 years of "threats, intimidation and physical violence". She was a "dominant personality who appears to have a desire to control the local community".
In fact, she styled herself "the Queen of Airds".
So unrelenting and predatory was their behaviour the local police commander sought the advice of John Scipione, New South Wales commissioner of police.
The courts weren't working, was the message. Jail sentences had an end point, and the offenders were eventually released into the community. And, in the case of Maria Brown, she had escaped imprisonment, despite the number of convictions she had racked up.
Detective Inspector Con Galea told the Administrative Appeals Tribunal Scipione suggested deportation - not only to deal with the Browns but as a state-wide deterrent.
Galea said he was told "deportation would send a message all over New South Wales' non-citizen criminal population. It would improve the community perception of safety.
Visa cancellation would have an immediate impact on the Pacific Island population and other non-citizens."
It appears to be an approach increasingly adopted in Australia. A spokesman for Australia's immigration department said currently 15 New Zealanders are being detained for deportation.
In 2004, Australia kicked out 16 people - a figure that rose to 38 last year. The case of the Browns, though, was "extraordinary".
On November 14, as the first light of day crept over Airds, police and immigration officers woke the Browns with news that their time in Australia was over. The Samoan-born Kiwis were led away in handcuffs and taken to the Villawood Detention Centre for deportation.
Since then, Galea later told the tribunal, a peace - of sorts - had emerged in Airds. The detention of the Browns had "a calming effect on the area". "Violent assault and robbery had ceased and there had been a reduction in the drug trade and social tension," the tribunal reported.
The case was high profile, and one of "general deterrence" - particularly because Maria Brown "appeared to operate with impunity" having escaped prison despite a number of convictions.
"I'm proud to be Australian," Maria Brown told the Sydney Daily Telegraph, "we'll fight this all the way." They failed in their February 6 appeal and have 28 days in which to lodge their final appeal with the federal court. No appeal has yet been lodged.
If their defence is anything like the occasionally farcical appeal earlier this month, they might as well leave for New Zealand now.
Maria Brown was defended by her partner Nasser Rajab, and the two struggled to keep their stories straight. They had met in New Zealand in 1991, she said. He said they met in Australia in 2001. She said she was unaware of any allegations her partner had supplied drugs - he admitted serving an 18-month prison sentence for such a crime ending just a few months before the tribunal hearing.
She said he had no criminal record - he was shown to have a 25-year string of convictions. She said he was a Kiwi; he said he was not. It was, found the tribunal president, "impossible to treat [Maria Brown] as a reliable witness".
Prince Brown's defence was equally ridiculous. He denied knowing a man police identified as a known drug dealer - and then produced a letter of support from the same man describing the young man as an upstanding member of the community.
The tribunal found there was an "unacceptably high risk" of Maria Brown continuing to offend. it was agreed that deporting her was likely to deter others from similar behaviour. Prince Brown, too, should be deported. "The evidence shows that he has been involved in criminal activity for almost his entire time in Australia."
The tribunal said the decision was made even though it might separate him from his daughters (aged 4 and 6) - in this case, the safety of the community outweighed the wellbeing of the child. If he wanted to continue being a father to his children, their mother would need to move the family to New Zealand to join him.
There is little doubt the Browns were well-known in Airds. A petition urging the tribunal to keep them in Australia was presented, with 81 signatures. A number of people testified as character witnesses for Maria Brown - she was a "great mother" who might look "intimidating and scary" but she was a "kind, soft, caring person". Prince Brown, despite his extensive convictions, was a "terrific mentor to the youth".
One character witness, Erika Dougall, later told the Herald on Sunday she hardly knew the Browns, even though she told the tribunal she had "never met a more loving mother to her children" and a "more loyal and faithful friend and neighbour".
Another character witness for Maria Brown, Kiwi Raewyn Leota, told the Herald on Sunday she wasn't surprised at all the pair were being kicked out of Australia. In a statement less glowing than that produced for the tribunal, she says: "I honestly don't blame them [for deporting the Browns] because a lot of people were hurt in the process. We can't stop it because [the authorities] are trying to make Australia a better place."
The "sad thing" about it was that the Browns would be returned to New Zealand, says Leota. "It's taking problems back there."
Scipione was bumptious following the arrest. "Anyone who comes to live in New South Wales has to abide by the laws of the state." The Browns were "well-known to the police, various government departments, and the people of Airds, who will, no doubt, will be happy to see the last of them".
In New Zealand, though, be warned - they could be coming to a neighbourhood near you next month.
