Recent stories in the media of missing persons returning to their families has buoyed Owen’s parents who hope that, one day, he will make contact with them.

Owen went missing on August 14, 2010, after attending the Shambala Music Festival on a property in British Columbia.

He got in a fight outside the festival and was taken to Grand Forks Hospital with head injuries before disappearing without a trace.

Owen’s parents Steve and Sharron Rooney, along with his three siblings, have searched the remote towns and villages in British Columbia and continue to work alongside Canadian detectives in the hope of finding clues that point to his whereabouts.

Sharron told the Times the thick bushland and closed towns in the region made searching difficult.

Two years on, she hopes posters of Owen placed at music festivals and on noticeboards in the region this month, will lead to something.

“There are a lot of transients that travel through the area fruit picking when the music festivals are on,” Sharron said.

“Maybe someone will return that saw Owen two years ago or knows what happened to him.”

She said a recent news story about a missing person contacting his family 25 years after his disappearance has given the family hope.

“You just never know,” she said.

The family is also using social media, including Facebook, Twitter and a website dedicated to Owen’s disappearance, to keep people informed and to get the word out.

Sharron has requested that anyone travelling to Canada and the United States print posters of Owen off the website and put them up where they can.

She continues to ask people to email friends living in North America to “keep the word out there”.

“You don’t know where the information is going to come from or who is going to see the posters.

“With six degrees of separation, you just never know.”

Sharron said recent leads from a Canadian pilot that contacted police when he thought he saw an Australia passenger with tattoos like Owen’s, had come to an end after the man was tracked down.

She told the Times that the past two years have been “almost like a dream” and the family has been “working hard to stay on an even keel”.

“We are looking for Owen with the love of him, not the loss of him,” Sharron said.

“We will continue to live our lives and search, but the search has become part of our life, not our whole life.

“We’ll never forget Owen, or forget that we’re looking for him.”

She said the support base in Ulladulla has helped them get on with their lives and rebuild their businesses.

- For more information or to contact the family or print posters log on to: www.find-owen.com