11-year-old Michelle Levy has been found.

Update:

Michelle Levy, 11, has returned home after being missing for 40 hours.

She was reunited with her family in North Bondi on Monday evening, after being released into the custody of “trusted” family members earlier in the day.

Adam Levy said he was thrilled his daughter had been found, but did not want to answer questions about prior dealings the family may have had with authorities, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

“Anything you may have heard had nothing to do with Michelle so we are not commenting,” he told Fairfax Media.

An older man who allowed the girl to stay with him in his unit in Randwick was interviewed by police and released without charge.

Police do not believe that anything “suspicious” occurred while Michelle was in the care of the man, who is thought to be in his fifties.

When asked why Michelle did not return home immediately, her father said he wanted her to have “quality time” with the relatives, Fairfax Media reported.

“We’ve got all the time in the world to spend with her later,” Mr Levy said.

The 11-year-old is a year 5 student at Woollahra Public School was found in Surry Hills about 10.30am on Monday, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Earlier we reported that her father, Adam Levy, told Fairfax Media he believed she had been staying with the man after he was contacted by a woman from Anglicare.

“She hooked up with someone on Saturday night – I mean, not in the hook-up sense,” Mr Levy said, according to Fairfax Media.

“Someone came across her and took her under their wing since Saturday night,”  he said. “We don’t know exactly what happened, all we know is that they went shopping.”

He told Fairfax he was confident that his daughter had not been harmed.

“I am quite comfortable with the fact he would have gone along with her wishes for a period,” he said.

“I hope, we presume, he would have been encouraging her to be in contact with us.”

He said he had not pressed his daughter for many details.

Previously, Mamamia wrote:

Police are still searching for Michelle Levy, an 11-year-old Sydney girl who has been missing since 6:30pm on Saturday evening.

Now, her father has made a heartfelt plea for the schoolgirl to come home.

“We we all miss her. Everyone’s worried about her,” Adam Levy told The Daily Telegraph. “We just want her to come home. She’s not going to be in trouble for running away, we just want her to be back safe with us.”

Michelle left her home on Glenayr Avenue in North Bondi at about 6:30pm after a family argument. While she has been known to leave home before, it has only been for very short periods of time.

Police hold concerns for her safety and have been searching for her across Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

On Sunday afternoon a witness reported Michelle was seen on Saturday walking towards Centennial Park, and volunteers and police have since searched the park — with officers broadcasting Michelle’s name and description from a helicopter above, according to Fairfax Media.

Michelle’s father said the girl was also spotted at a Coles supermarket in Randwick at 3pm on Sunday, Fairfax Media reports.

On Sunday night, up to a thousand members of the Bondi and Jewish communities combed the local area in search of her, Fairfax Media reports.

Her father declined to elaborate on what their fight had been about, but told media that it was not the first time his headstrong daughter had run off. However, she has never previously vanished overnight; Mr Levy told media normally the girl would go to her grandparents’ house, also in North Bondi.

“If we fight, she storms off and sulks like a normal 11-year-old girl but she normally doesn’t go very far, only around the corner to her grandparents’ house,” Mr Levy said.

“She’s a chip off the old block really, and sometimes we do have a personality clash.

Michelle left home wearing a short-sleeved  party dress with black, orange and yellow flowers and a black sash.

New South Wales police are now trawling CCTV footage, and she was reportedly  spotted at Westfield Bondi junction.

She is described as 150cm tall with a thin build, long red hair, blue eyes and freckles.

If you have any information please call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or Bondi Police on (02) 9369 9699.