GABRIEL Nagy doesn't remember when Princess Diana died, Operation Desert Storm or the end of the Cold War.

That's because for 23 years, most of his life was a blank.

But now, the man who lost himself, his family and his memories has been given them back thanks to the dogged determination of a police officer who solved a decades-long mystery.

Mr Nagy's extraordinary story - told to The Courier-Mail to give hope to the families of missing persons - began on January 21, 1987.

The father of two children, Jennifer, 9, and Stephen, 11, had phoned his wife Pamela to say he would be home for lunch.

But he never arrived and the following day his burnt-out car was found on the side of the road.

"He'd never been away from home without telling anyone," Jennifer said.

"It was very soon after that everyone started rallying around and started putting out the big alarm bells."

About two weeks later, Mr Nagy withdrew money from his bank account and used it to buy camping supplies at a store in Newcastle.

It would be their last clue as to his movements.

"It was just so traumatic for everyone," Jennifer said.

"It really affected me emotionally. People would ask 'where's your dad?'. It was too much, too painful.

"Nobody had any answers to explain the sudden disappearance of a dad who was a loving, caring father.

"I thought he was my world and all of a sudden it's taken away from me."

Soon they relocated from their Sydney home to Queensland's Sunshine Coast.

Pamela made sure they were always in the phone book in case her husband ever found his way home. But soon they became convinced he was dead.

But more than 20 years later and just two weeks before an inquest would have declared him dead, Senior Constable Georgia Robinson found something.

As part of her preparations for the approaching coroner's court hearing, Sen Const Robinson, who had been searching for the former Sydney man for 10 years, did a final sweep and found a Medicare record in the name of Gabriel Nagy.

"I'd been living under a pseudonym for a long time but I'd been having flashes of my proper name; things were slowly returning," Mr Nagy said.

Life had been tough for the former shop fitter and accountancy student.

He'd once had a job, a comfortable home and a family he loved but he remembered none of that.

One of his earliest memories is of his time in Newcastle, where he remembers bleeding profusely from a head wound.

Scarring on the back of his head is a constant reminder of the injury he believes caused his amnesia.

The next 20 years are mostly blank, but Mr Nagy recalls being offered shelter and work on a farm in Rockhampton, as well as odd jobs on fishing boats and building sites around Queensland.

He slept rough on the streets, camped on the beach and hit the bottle to dull the pain of his nothing life.

And then in Mackay, he met Pastor Barry Hayhoe, a truck driver turned church man who saw something in Mr Nagy that was worth saving.

He offered him a room at the River of Life Church and the job of caretaker.

"I jumped at the chance and it kept me off the streets," Mr Nagy said.

It was the Pastor who helped him get a Medicare card in his original name when Mr Nagy needed cataract surgery.

That record was spotted by Sen Const Robinson who picked up the phone and dialled his number.

"She said she wanted to come up and talk with me," he said.

"There was something in the back of my head there that I must have done something wrong to have been living the way I was.

"But the first thing she said when she arrived was: 'you haven't killed anybody, you're not wanted by police you're a missing person and that's not a crime'.

"She asked me a lot of questions and started showing me photographs.

"It was like a cartoon where flashbulbs go off on top of people's heads.

"She gave me a letter from Jennifer, a letter from Pam and letters from my Dad and stepmum."

Sen Const Robinson told Mr Nagy the ball was in his court as to whether he wanted to contact his family, who by then had been told he was alive and well.

"That afternoon I sat down and wrote the longest letter I'd ever written in my life seven and a half pages on both sides of the paper," he said.

He posted the letter to his wife and daughter and three days later a message from his daughter came through on an old mobile phone he'd been given.

"It said 'Hi Dad' and that was enough to make me cry," an emotional Mr Nagy said.

"She wrote that she'd finished the letter and she still loved me.

"Ten minutes later the phone rang and it was Pam. We talked until the battery died."

Two weeks later Jennifer, then 32, flew to Mackay to see the father she had only known as a little girl.

"He met me at the airport with a big bunch of flowers," she said.

"It was like it was all in slow motion and we ran through the airport into each others arms."

Mr Nagy has remained in Mackay but keeps in constant contact with his parents, his wife and their now adult children.

Jennifer said she wanted to tell her story to show others what it means to a family to have answers when someone disappears.

She believes her father developed a condition called Dissociative Fugue, a rare psychiatric disorder that causes memory loss and often leads to people wandering away from their families.

"I want to give people hope that sometimes good things can happen miracles can happen," she said.

"If you have left home, for whatever reason, ring and let somebody know you are OK. It doesn't have to be your family.

"The not knowing can really, really affect you in the end."