Family hope for Vic girl missing 40 years

The family of a Melbourne girl who went missing 40 years ago has made a fresh public appeal for information about her disappearance.

Siblings of missing Melbourne girl Anna Banitskas

A fresh appeal has been made for information about a Melbourne girl who went missing in 1974. (AAP)

Anna Banitskas disappeared 40 years ago at the age of 15, but her family still has her Melbourne home ready for her return.

Her elderly parents moved into a nursing home last year but told their three remaining children to keep their Lalor house in case Anna comes back.

"The house is still there. My dad and mum still say `just keep the house, just in case we get your sister back'," her brother Chris Banitskas told reporters on Thursday.

Anna, or Annastaes, took some family photographs and left home to board the Kingsway Drive bus to work at Rolex at 7am on August 27, 1974.

Police don't know if she ever got on that bus, and there has been no sign of her since.

"When you don't know anything you still hold onto that little hope she's out there," her sister Loretta Pantou said.

Brother Peter Banitskas said Anna's disappearance was always on their minds, but it hit hardest at weddings and family gatherings.

"You look at other families being complete; that's when it hits home," he said.

"You think `geez I wish she was here'."

Oldest brother Chris, who was 17 when Anna went missing, has had to carry the burden for a family that had only arrived from Greece three years before.

"I went through a lot. I got sick at once stage as well," Chris said.

"I had to comfort my parents as much as I could."

Chris said if Anna was still alive but did not want to speak to them, he hoped she would at least tell police she was alive.

"Now it's time for her, if she's out there, please," he said.

"Not for us, for mum and dad."

Mrs Pantou doorknocked a street in Doncaster after a psychic told the family Anna was living there, but she found nothing.

Detective Senior Constable Craig Hall said police were trying to speak to a builder who employed some workers at a site on the street where the Banitskas lived, but apart from that had nothing to go on.

"We just have no leads. This is why we're making this public appeal," Det Sen Const Hall said.


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