MARKED MAN: One of the Maori Waka paddlers sweats as he forms a guard of honour outside the Te Tiriti O Waitangi Marae at Waitangi.

GREETINGS: The challenge is issued by Maori warriors as Prime Minister John Key and his party enter the Te Tiriti O Waitangi Marae at Waitangi.

LISTEN UP: Maori Party MP Pita Sharples speaks while attending the dawn service on the upper marae at Waitangi.

LIT UP: The flagpole is raised at the dawn service on the upper marae at Waitangi.

A Waitangi dawn ceremony ended with a Maori elder prophesying the destruction of Wellington in a huge earthquake that would leave the Beehive "lying in the debris of the streets".

In a strange end to this morning's prayer ceremony at the Treaty Grounds, Kerei Tia Toa said he had "seen" a great earthquake that was going to ravage Wellington.

He predicted the earthquake would create a tsunami that would stretch down to Kaikoura and when the water returned it would rush into the streets of the capital and cause widespread destruction as far north as Whanganui.

PETER MEECHAM/Fairfax Media WARNING: The flagpole after attending the dawn service on the upper marae at Waitangi.

The crowd of over 1000 went silent in disbelief as Tia Toa detailed the cataclysm he had foreseen.

"I've seen body bags lying in the streets of Wellington,'' he told the crowd.

"I have seen the roof of the Beehive lying in the debris of the streets of Wellington.''

Tia Toa said he had waited 38 years to share his prediction.

He did not know what year the catastrophe would occur but he did know it would be in the month of June.

Prime Minister John Key, who led a prayer earlier, said he would "not be taking too much away from that last [speaker]."