Dying woman's desperate plea in 70-year search for family
Janet Buttel has been on a life-long search for her younger brothers, who she still doesn’t know what happened to when they lost contact almost 70 years ago.
Ms Buttel says she is racing to find her two boys, Maxwell Phillip Turner and Lawrence Alexander Turner, after being informed she had just months, if not weeks, to live when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
"I'm hoping someone might know something, but maybe I've left it too late," the 73-year-old told ABC news.
"[The doctors] said they can't really do much about it, maybe just hold [the cancer] back, maybe a bit of extra time and that's it.”
Ms Buttel lost contact with her two siblings when she just four-years-old in 1951 and living in the Victoria town of Ballarat.
She lived with her parents and her four siblings; her big brother, her twin brother, and her two younger brothers.
Sadly, in the same year her mother, Vera Grace Turner, passed away from a perforated bowel while lying on the operating table.
It was a life altering situation that turned her family the wrong way up.
Ms Buttel's father was unable to look after all four children and moved with his only daughter to Western Australia.
"I was getting pneumonia all the time, so [my father] was told to bring me out here health wise, and my [two older] brothers went to my aunty's," she said.
"But where the other two [brothers] went we don't know.
"All I remember is they were just babies. I don't remember much about them.
"My father just walked out. He didn't want any of them. He's never seen his sons or spoken to them."
Thankfully, Ms Buttel had been able to find and connect with her twin and older brother while they were adults but has been left in the dark on the whereabouts of her two younger brothers, now 69 and 72, for almost seven decades.
The 73-year-old says she got a “feeling” her brothers might still be in the Ballarat region when she visited her mother’s grave three years ago.
In Smythesdale, near Ballarat, Ms Buttell recalls finding “flowers” on the grave site where her dear mum had been laid to rest.
"I think they are [close by]— I've got a feeling," Ms Buttel said.
"I've been to my mother's grave site and somebody's been there to put flowers down, so somebody must know something.
"I can see next to her grave my grandparents are buried, so they're all connected around there."
Ms Buttel's friend from childhood in Western Australia, Gloria Underwood, is also assisting in looking for the missing siblings.
"My parents were going to adopt her at one stage," Ms Underwood said.
"She's been very self-sufficient her whole life, but that little girl way back then, I've learned what the tragic story really is."
Ms Buttel said she has a simple message for her brothers, as she waits on further information from Victoria's Department of Justice and Community Safety.
"I'd like to know they're well," she said.
"And I'd like them to know they had a sister, and mum, and dad, and two brothers.
"[And] let them know I was always thinking about them and never knowing where they were."