Myths of the Freedom Campers

Zombie tourists drive camper vans off highways,
and into ditches, and leave them there without a care.
They eat brains and spit out the remains.
In public car parks they ignore any official sign.
They hurry around on the wrong side of the road.
They don’t speak unless challenged in te reo,
and bump into you backwards, carrying selfie sticks;
and then they deliquesce into phophorescent slime,
all the while protesting they are having a good time.

Zombie tourists take scenic routes but feel every bump,
and they always get trapped behind a wide-load,
so their camper van ends up crawling like a sick toad.
They act like they don’t know the road code,
stuck in the middle of a whole lot of hogs:
bikers blatting along like a slow-moving bog,
who only stop for a mass take-out of burritos,
which are eated al fresco and à la mode,
off the roof of their low-rider support-vehicle.
And as the camper van pulls out, the bikers all growl:
may the circle be unbroken, bye-bye.

Zombie tourists look for Aotearoa the White Whale.
You won’t find that Whale in any guide-books,
but they believe they might trace it in carvings,
still sunk in raupo swamps, that glow in the dark.
And on either side of the Alps, there are stories,
small myths, always being crafted and left for others to find.
New Zealand’s scenery, they say, is so beautiful
it’s almost obscene, because the wealthy elite
have reserved it for a blow-out lunch, that will turn
into a saturnalia of livestock gobbled up by Cyclops
and his whole one-eyed clan, as they eat the ideals
of egalitarianism, and hose what’s left down the gurgler.

David Eggleton

 David Eggleton lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin and is a former New Zealand poet laureate. His Respirator: A Laureate Collection 2019 -2022 was published by Otago University Press in 2023. Lifting the Island: Poems was published in the United States by Red Hen Press in 2025.