THE long search for Terry has proved costly for the Floyd family.

His brother Daryl has spent more than $50,000 of his savings funding the investigation.

The health toll has also been dramatic.

Dorothy Floyd died 12 years to the day after her 12-year-old son went missing.

She died of a brain tumour aged 56.

Mr Floyd’s sister Sheryle Cain spoke at length with the Bendigo Advertiser in 2009 about the stress Terry’s disappearance had placed on her parents.

“That’s all they ever wanted, was to find him,” she said. “Mum always said ‘I want to find my boy so I can bury him’.”

Ms Cain described the experience as “mentally and physically draining”. She said her family had been forever associated with the missing Maryborough boy.

“What my mother and father went through, having people stare at them in the street and being pointed at and saying ‘that’s Terry Floyd’s parents’,” Ms Cain said.

“They had stigma involved as well, because nobody knew what happened to him.

“If he was killed in a car accident people would have been saying ‘poor Mrs Floyd’.

“But it was always the whispers that Mum couldn’t handle.”

Daryl Floyd is also adamant that stress led to his mother’s premature death.

“I mainly do this for my parents’ sake,” Mr Floyd said. “My parents have passed away; they spent the majority (of the) last part of their life looking for their son.

“What needs to happen, I believe, is Terry’s remains are to be found and to be buried out with his parents and given a proper burial as he deserves.”

Despite the emotional and financial burden, Mr Floyd is determined to continue with the search. He remains adamant he will not rest until his brother, whom he still regards as his best mate, is doing so peacefully.

The search for Terry has recommenced at a disused mine shaft near Avoca. His family believes he was killed and dumped in the mine shaft in 1975.

“All the information leads to this shaft,” Mr Floyd said. “I don’t want to find him here. To think his body is at the base of all that is not very good.”