Perth family’s car swallowed by sinkhole in Indonesia

A Perth family has had an incredibly close call on an Indonesian road.

Michael and Margie Rule were stopped in traffic when their car was swallowed by a huge sinkhole.

Luckily, they managed to pull their toddler to safety just in time.

A truck went over first, prompting Margie to race to grab the couple's one-year-old son from the backseat.

A good Samaritan helped Michael clamber out of the passenger side - with seconds to spare.

"It's kind of like losing your house, everything we own is in there, our entire lives, so just to see if falling over the edge of a cliff like that was kind of devastating,” Michael told 7NEWS.

It happened in Yogyakarta in Java. The road gave way metres from excavation works for an underpass project.

The Rule family has been travelling the globe in their beloved Landrover since the start of the year, documenting their adventures on their website 'Rules of the Road'.

Their slogan, perhaps fittingly, is “discovering the world - one mishap at a time”.

The car will take six weeks to repair but the family say it won't end their trip of a lifetime.