Australian amnesiac Gabriel Nagy reunites with his family after 23 years

On January 21, 1987, Gabriel Nagy went missing.

The Australian father of two called his wife, Pamela, to tell her he'd be home for lunch. He never arrived.

The next day, his burnt-out car was found on the side of the road.

Two weeks later, Nagy withdrew money from his bank account to buy camping supplies in Newcastle. No one heard from him again.

More than 20 years later, and two weeks before a public inquest to declare him dead, a police officer managed to track Nagy down after finding a Medicare record with his name on it, the Courier-Mail reports.

Nagy wasn't dead. But he didn't remember his old life either — or much of anything prior to his disappearance.

Nagy had spent two decades working odd jobs on fishing boats and construction sites under a pseudonym. Not long before the officer located him, Nagy had been having flashes of his birth name. A pastor who had taken him in and given him a job as a caretaker helped him get a Medicare card in his birth name.

He told the Courier-Mail that his earlier memories was of his time in Newcastle, where he recalls "bleeding profusely" from a head wound. The scarring on the back of his head points to the injury he believes caused his decades-long amnesia.

When the officer tracked Nagy down where he lived in Mackay, reassuring the confused man that he had done nothing wrong, she showed Nagy photographs of his family.

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

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

Nagy was told that his family had been made aware that he was alive and well, but that any contact was his responsibility. That afternoon, he wrote a 7-and-a-half-page letter to his family.

Three days later, his wife called him. "We talked until the battery died," Nagy said.

Two weeks later, Jennifer, flew to Mackay to reunite with her father.

"I want to give people hope that sometimes good things can happen miracles can happen," she told the Courier-Mail.

"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."

Jennifer believes her father developed a condition called "dissociative fugue," a rare psychiatric disorder that causes memory loss.

"People with dissociative fugue temporarily lose their sense of personal identity and impulsively wander or travel away from their homes or places of work. They often become confused about who they are and might even create new identities. Outwardly, people with this disorder show no signs of illness, such as a strange appearance or odd behaviour," WebMD explains.

(Photo from couriermail.com.au)