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The first sign the local man received of his predicament was when a neighbor loudly knocked on his front door and informed him his cherished Mini had fallen into a hole.

"I stepped outside anticipating a minor dip under a wheel or something similar. But when I went out to take a look, I understood, oh, that truly is a proper hole," he stated.

His automobile had dropped into a 3-metre wide opening, possibly created by a mineshaft collapse, and McKenzie has spent 25 days caught in a bureaucratic "nightmare" trying to figure out how to extricate his car.

The Main Problem: Unclaimed Land

The hitch is that the land has no registered owner. The authorities has said it won't take down the fences blocking off the hole until property rights had been confirmed. "It's quite a difficult situation," said McKenzie, 36, a self-employed creative. "There's bureaucracy at every turn."

McKenzie has lived in the neighborhood in Redruth for about 10 years and actually has a parking space next to his house, but it is not wide enough to be useful so he began parking outside a nearby bakery. He had checked with both the shop and the council that he wouldn't get a ticket.

"I'd finally felt like I was getting somewhere, I had a dependable small vehicle that was fuel-efficient and easy to keep on the road. It signified I could finally focus on trying to put money aside to take my child on her aspirational journey to Japan someday. She's always wanted to go."

The Event and Aftermath

Then arrived that loud rapping on Saturday 1 November. "The person next door was very alarmed. The police arrived and secured the zone off. We all had to remain in the homes because we can't get out without going past the hole. The road crew came out, erected the barrier up, and then they returned and placed a additional barrier up around it as well."

It is thought the hole may be an unlucky legacy of a historic local mine, a abandoned copper and tin mine.

McKenzie thought he would be separated from his car for a few days. But that short time have now turned into weeks.

A Possible Solution

An end may be approaching. The authorities has said it will cooperate with McKenzie to – briefly – remove the barriers to permit the Mini to be removed. He said: "They are willing to assist my insurance company's retrieval crew and try to arrange a date and an acceptable way of extracting it that ensures no anybody at danger."

The car has been badly damaged and is likely to be declared a total loss. "On the bright side I can say my Mini met its end in a memorable way – not everyone can claim their car was swallowed by the Earth itself," McKenzie noted.

Authority Response

A representative from the local council expressed it felt sorry with McKenzie. But it said: "The ground giving way did not occur on council land. We have made the area safe and advised the vehicle owner that we will arrange to temporarily remove the fence to allow him to retrieve the car.

"As the land is unregistered, our barriers will remain in place until property ownership has been established, and we will continue to monitor the vicinity to ensure everyone's security."