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The first indication the local man received of his predicament was when a neighbor urgently banged on his front door and told him his beloved Mini had fallen into a hole.

"I went out anticipating a small pothole under a tire or something like that. But when I went out to check it out, I realized, oh, that really is a proper hole," he stated.

His vehicle had descended into a 3-metre wide gap, likely created by a mineshaft collapse, and McKenzie has spent 25 days stuck in a administrative "difficult situation" trying to determine how to retrieve his Mini.

The Main Issue: Unregistered Property

The hitch is that the land has no registered owner. The authorities has stated it won't take down the barriers cordoning off the sinkhole until property rights had been established. "It's quite a difficult situation," said McKenzie, 36, a freelance designer. "There's bureaucracy at every turn."

McKenzie has lived in the neighborhood in Redruth for about a decade and in fact has a parking space beside his house, but it is too narrow to be useful so he started leaving his car outside a nearby bakery. He had checked with both the shop and the local authority that he would avoid receiving a parking fine.

"I had finally reached a point like I was getting somewhere, I had a dependable small vehicle that was economical and easy to keep on the road. It meant I could finally focus on trying to save up to take my child on her dream trip to Japan someday. She's constantly dreamed to go."

The Event and Aftermath

Then came that knock on the door on Saturday 1 November. "My neighbour was very alarmed. The police arrived and closed the zone off. We all had to remain in the houses because we couldn't leave without going past the collapse. The highways people came out, erected the barrier up, and then they came out and put a second fence up around it as well."

It is believed the hole may be an unlucky remnant of a historic local mine, a abandoned mining site.

McKenzie thought he would be separated from his vehicle for a few days. But days have now become weeks.

A Potential Resolution

An conclusion may be approaching. The authorities has stated it will cooperate with McKenzie to – briefly – lift the fences to permit the car to be recovered. He commented: "They are willing to work with my insurer's retrieval crew and try to schedule a date and an acceptable way of extracting it that doesn't put anybody at danger."

The car has been significantly harmed and is probably to be declared a total loss. "On the bright side I can say my Mini went out in style – not everyone can claim their car was swallowed by the Earth itself," McKenzie remarked.

Authority Statement

A spokesperson from the authorities expressed it felt sorry with McKenzie. But it added: "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 lift the fence to enable him to recover the vehicle.

"Since no one owns the land, our barriers will stay up until land ownership has been established, and we will persist to monitor the surrounding area to guarantee public safety."