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The first sign the local man received of his situation was when a neighbor loudly knocked on his door and told him his beloved Mini had fallen into a opening.

"I went out expecting 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 vehicle had dropped into a 10-foot wide gap, likely created by a collapsed mine shaft, and McKenzie has endured 25 days caught in a administrative "nightmare" trying to determine how to extricate his Mini.

The Main Problem: Unregistered Land

The hitch is that the land has no registered owner. The local council has stated it won't take down the fences blocking off the hole until property rights had been confirmed. "It's a bit of a nightmare," said McKenzie, 36, a freelance creative. "There's bureaucracy at every turn."

McKenzie has lived in the neighborhood in Redruth for about 10 years and in fact has a parking space beside his house, but it is not wide enough to be practical so he began parking outside a local bakery. He had checked with both the bakery 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 economical and simple to keep on the road. It signified I could at last focus on trying to save up to take my child on her dream trip to Japan someday. She's always wanted to go."

The Incident and Consequences

Then arrived that knock on the door on Saturday 1 November. "The person next door was quite panicked. The officers arrived and closed the zone off. We all had to remain in the homes because we couldn't leave without passing by the hole. The highways people arrived, put the fence up, and then they returned and put a second fence up surrounding it as well."

It is believed the opening may be an unfortunate legacy of a historic local mine, a disused copper and tin mine.

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

A Possible Solution

An end may be in sight. The council has stated it will work with McKenzie to – briefly – remove the barriers to allow the car to be recovered. He said: "They have agreed to work with my insurance company's recovery team and try to arrange a day and an suitable way of extracting it that doesn't put anybody at danger."

The vehicle has been badly damaged and is probably to be written off. "On the bright side I can say my Mini met its end in style – not everyone can say their car was swallowed by the Earth itself," McKenzie noted.

Council Statement

A representative from the authorities expressed it sympathised with McKenzie. But it said: "This collapse did not happen on public property. We have made the area safe and advised the car owner that we will organize to temporarily remove the fence to enable him to recover the vehicle.

"Since no one owns the land, our safety measures will stay up until land ownership has been established, and we will persist to observe the vicinity to guarantee everyone's security."