After buying a new car I wanted to open it up and give it a nice thrashing, so I headed up to Mt Lofty look out. This mean I could get the car revving a fair bit going up the mountain’s incline, and going up to a hundred ks. But the story really starts as we were leaving Mt Lofty…

We had parked the car in one of the lower car parks, a short 5 minute walk from the summit. After spending twenty minutes gazing out at the sprawl of lights in the shadow of the mountain, we headed back to the car. Although there had been a small gathering of people around when we got there, they had quickly disappeared and it seemed we were the only ones left.

It was pitch black up in the hills, with the only light coming from the yellow-orange sodium street lights littered around the car park. Winter was slowly coming to an end but the night was still fairly chilly and we pulled our jackets around us tighter as we headed for the car. Our conversation had fallen to an easy silence and the radio was turned low. The car hummed as I drove it out the car park and down the winding path towards the exit. But the gate was shut.

I pulled the handbrake on and looked at my friend. We were both puzzled and, at first, confused. There had been no closing-times sign out the front, nor had we heard any one come to lock up. And yet here we were, the exit barred by two huge metal gates chained and padlocked. To the side of the fence was a small sign which had the rangers phone number on it in case of emergency. Well, we figured that this was a good time to call them.

Grabbing his mobile my friend gave the number a call. The ranger answered at the other end and after a small conversation in which my friend was doing something to the padlock that the ranger told him to, my friend walked back up to me. His face was confused and also a little bit worried.

None of the rangers had locked the gate, and after checking the padlock for them- the one which barred this gate was not one of theirs. A complete stranger had come and locked the two of us in. The ranger said to sit where we were and he’d be about twenty minutes.

In the dead of the night we were sitting miles from civilisation and some stranger had now locked us in so we couldn’t escape with our car. I seriously was waiting for some axe-wielding maniac to come charging at us…