THE Bolton father of a woman who vanished without trace two years ago fears she will never be seen alive again.

Sara Niethe has been missing since she was involved in a row at a former boyfriend's home in New Zealand in March 2003.

Her three children and her mother, who she lived with in a remote farming community, have not heard from her since and her bank account has remained untouched.

Police have also been unable to trace the light blue Honda Civic that Sarah, aged 30, was driving that night despite a massive search of low-lying marshland of the Hauraki Plains, where she lived 80 miles south of Auckland.

Today, speaking on the second anniversary of Sara's mystery disappearance, her father David Marbeck, of Shireburn Avenue, Tonge Fold, said: "As time goes on, it gets less and less likely that we'll ever see her again.

"It's a total mystery to us and to the police.

"There's not a day goes by when I don't think about her but it's hard to imagine that she will turn up alive."

Sara had been drinking at the home of ex-boyfriend Mark Pakenham on the evening of March 30, 2003, before leaving to make the 10-minute drive home early the next morning.

But she failed to return to the house in the nearby town of Kerepehi which she shared with her three children and mother Eileen, aged 60.

Sara, a part-time farm hand and school volunteer, had planned down to the last detail a party to celebrate the birthday of her middle child, Danielle, which was due to take place just days later.

Detectives changed the focus of their inquiry from a missing persons case to a hunt for a body after several appeals for information and a 50,000 New Zealand dollar reward failed to throw any light on Sara's whereabouts.

Mr Marbeck, said her children Dion, aged 14, Danielle, aged 12, and Simone, aged 10, were slowly starting to rebuild their lives.

"Kids get on with their lives," he said, "But they've still got a lot of questions which need to be answered for everybody's sake.

"We would just like to know what's happened so we can start grieving or take our anger out in some way because, as it stands now, we don't know what has happened.

Mr Marbeck even joined the search for his daughter. He visited the area where she disappeared last September but was unable to help the family trace her.

"The area where she went missing is very desolate," he said. "It's a farming area and you can go miles and miles without ever seeing anyone.

"The whole country is very sparsely populated and the police have searched everywhere they can.

The family, including the couple's son Lee, aged 35, moved to New Zealand from Bolton in 1975 and spent 11 years living in Auckland before Mr Marbeck, aged 63, returned to Bolton in 1986.

Sara spent six years married to Terry Niethe, the father of her youngest daughter, before they separated in the late 1990s.

Police say the file is still open but the man leading the search for the Sara, Detective Senior Sergeant Glenn Dunbier, said he could imagine "no circumstances in which she would be alive".