FOR the traveller, adventure may unfold on the other side of the world, or even in your own backyard. For me, some years ago, it was the latter.

My adventure came in one of those years when we decided to holiday at home - to spend our holidays on the Sunshine Coast playing the tourist.

We had heard about a shortcut across a rugged hinterland range which would take us to a tiny Sunshine Coast hinterland town we were keen to visit.

Not really knowing what was ahead of us, or quite where we were going, one Monday morning in November we packed our rather wimpish suburban sedan and headed for the hills. I'm a Sunshine Coast lad, born and bred, and felt quite certain that we wouldn't encounter anything I couldn't handle.

So certain was I of my competence as a traveller, that we didn't tell anyone where we were going, and didn't carry a mobile phone. Our preparations comprised packing a picnic lunch and a substantial flask of tea.

The day had dawned grey and overcast, and light rain fell, but I reasoned that a bit of a sprinkle would help lay the dust on the standard dirt roads of the hinterland ranges.

Without incident, we climbed a narrow tortuous road into the hills, to arrive at our starting point for the range crossing. There was the road sign, announcing that our destination was 39km away.

To our surprise and delight, at the intersection from which our journey began, there was a ghost town - rows of houses, sheds, offices - a former forestry town. In the altitude of the ranges, grey mist swirled down the deserted streets of the town, and I suspected the rain had become a little heavier.

The houses looked forlorn, locked and boarded up, except for two from which the smoke of wood fires curled out of the chimneys and hung above the houses. The range air was cold.

Cheerfully we urged our little sedan into action, down the dirt road and towards our destination. I'm a farm boy, dirt roads hold no terrors for me, and besides, this was a reasonably decent road.

It concerned me that the road obviously hadn't been used by other vehicles for quite some time, but that merely meant we had the road to ourselves.

My brow furrowed a little when the road occasionally narrowed down to two wheel ruts, and when our pampered suburban chariot bottomed-out in a couple of huge potholes, by now filled with water to trap the unsuspecting. But I'm made of sterner stuff than to give up in the face of an obstacle or two. I told my wife we were pressing on. The rain seemed heavier still.

Soon we left the relatively safe sandy road of the forested area, and began negotiating long steep slopes through dense rainforest. To the right of the narrow goat track was a vertical bank, to the left … I didn't dare look, it seemed a vertical drop

But worse still, the track surface now had become greasy red clay, and the wimpish chariot was protesting, slipping and sliding down each long slope, and sliding and slipping up the next.

The road deteriorated further still, and by now the rain was teeming. Halfway down our third slope, I had a light-bulb moment. This was madness, this was an unused forestry track, no other vehicles ever came this way, and if we kept going we would likely end up at the bottom of a ravine with no one knowing our whereabouts.

I halted half-way down the slope, and announced to my greatly relieved wife that we were going to turn around and retrace our steps before it was too late. She alighted and supplied me with directions as I inched the car around, now hanging over the crevasse, now nose up against the cliff face, until finally it was facing back up the hill in the direction from which we had come.

With us both back on board, I gunned the beast and we slithered our way up slope one. With sweat beading on my brow, we slithered up slope two, and finally up slope three. Then, hallelujah, we were back on flat sandy track.

But our celebrations were short-lived. We rounded a bend, and there in front of us, lying across the road from side to side, was a huge tree. We had passed there not 15 minutes earlier, and in the meantime it had fallen completely cutting off our escape.

Too big to move, too wide to circumnavigate, the tree had us trapped. My preparations hadn't included packing an axe.

I was determined we were not going back down the greasy hills only to disappear into the jungle. But what would we do? We did the only reasonable thing under the circumstances - we had a cup of tea.

With rain cascading down we abandoned our car and began the walk back to the ghost town; it did after all have a couple of occupied houses, and we imagined ourselves soon thawing out around a fire, after which someone would help us remove the tree and retrieve our car.

We had no idea how far we had to walk for help. As it turned out, it was 10km. The walk was less than inspiring; at times it was plain creepy.

Copious old car bodies littered the sides of the road, all riddled with bullet holes, and every road sign resembling a colander. This was the Wild West.

Two and a half hours later, with thick grey mist swirling and the temperature down to about 10 degrees, the ghost town came into view. We turned into the first street to the second house on the right. We knew it was occupied; the lights were on (it had become quite dark), there was a car in the carport and smoke curled out of the chimney.

We discreetly stood outside the front gate and I called out that we were travellers in need of help. We were answered by a deathly silence; the only sound being the soft splash of the raindrops.

After several shouts for help, I thought perhaps I should enter the gate, go up on to the veranda and knock at the door. As I put my hand on the gate, a huge yellow Baskervillian hound materialised from around the side of the house and positioned himself on the other side of the gate with fangs bared.

I said to my wife: "I don't think we're welcome here." So we pressed on towards occupied house No.2. By now we were a little rattled, and as we walked down the main street we heard a car engine spring to life at house No.1 and the car speed away.

We turned into the side street to where house No.2 was located, a four-wheel drive with door open parked in front. Help was surely at hand.

Again, there was the ubiquitous large dog in the yard, so I didn't venture beyond the fence, but from there called out that we were seeking help. As we approached, there had been sounds of life in the house, but when I called all was silent.

I called out again, quite persistently, until finally the curtains parted on the top floor of the house to reveal the face of a young woman, who asked what we wanted.

I explained what had happened; yes I know it sounds incredible, but it was the truth. She pulled the curtains closed and disappeared. We could hear the murmur of voices inside. Again the young woman's face appeared to ask me to repeat our story. Again she retreated.

More murmurs followed, and then a man's face appeared to scold me for being such an idiot as to drive my wimpish sedan down such a nasty road on such a nasty day. I couldn't disagree with him.

When I could get a word in, I asked could he loan me an axe. By his reaction, you'd think he'd come face-to-face with the axe-murderer. In his defence, three dangerous prisoners had escaped from a Brisbane prison the day before, but my wife and I hardly looked like escaped prisoners; or did we? We were wet, and a mess.

With the loan of axes or chainsaws out of the question, he phoned the RACQ. No, they couldn't help because these were forestry roads. So he rang the Forestry Department. Yes, they could help, but not right away - the boss's 4WD had become bogged. They would be out in about an hour.

Meantime, we could hear the footsteps of our inquisitor/rescuer coming down the internal staircase. He appeared at the front door, and his disposition hadn't improved. He wanted to hear my story yet again, and continued to berate me for being a twit. I still couldn't but agree with him. I distracted him by pathetically waving my business card, explaining that I was a Sunshine Coast church pastor on holidays.

But he soon regained my attention; as he spoke, he pulled back one flap of his jacket, to reveal a sidearm hanging on his hip. I wondered had my wife (who was sheltering from the rain under a tree) spotted what we were obviously meant to see.

Now I was certain this was the Wild West. But where was John Wayne? The man's wife appeared at the front door, and while hurrying a couple of young children (who wanted to talk to us) back into the house, offered to make us a cup of tea.

We eagerly accepted, and had our tea and a jam-drop while awkwardly trying to make polite conversation. When the tea was finished, our rescuer packed us off up the street to an old boarded up office, there to wait for the forestry truck.

For the next hour or so we huddled under the eaves of a boarded-up building, trying to keep as warm and dry as possible. When the nice young forestry man arrived, he too was a little nervous and seemed uneasy about our story.

As we drove towards our car, he kept asking "How far did you say it was?" I asked him: "What's with everyone around here; no one is at all friendly, everyone is distrusting?"

His reply: "The only reason people come up here is either to harvest their drug crops or steal staghorns. Up here, police shoot outs are not unusual. The man back at the two-storey house is a farmer who regularly has live stock shot by passers-by."

With things becoming clearer in my mind, and to the great relief of the forestry worker, we rounded a bend to come across our car and the tree. Five minutes of chainsaw work, 20 minutes of driving and we were back in civilisation and enjoying our lunch (at 3.30pm).

The moral of the story? Adventure may be just around the next bend, always carry a mobile phone (after that episode, our sons bought us one) and seriously plan your journeys.