Ken Gamble

Ken Gamble is a private investigator.

Over his long and colourful career, Ken has staked out bikies making false insurance claims, raided factories pumping out fake Bart Simpson t-shirts and burst in on boiler rooms full of online scammers.

Ken's focus these days is on complex cybercrime and large-scale financial fraud with his agency, IFW Global.

But perhaps the investigations that have had the most impact are the cases that Ken has taken on pro bono.

The ones on behalf of grieving families overseas whose adventure-loving kids had come to Australia as young backpackers and then just disappeared.

Hi, Ken.

Hi.

You spent part of your childhood living in Mount Isa.

What took your family there?

I did.

My father was a builder.

We started our life in Mount Isa in the 70s and I started primary school there at Central State School in 1971.

What are your memories of how Mount Isa looked and smelt back in the 70s?

It was hot.

It was very hot.

It was a very hot place and it had this, the big mines were pumping out this sulphur all the time.

So there was this incredible sulphur smell, which I never knew what it was as a kid.

But years later, I come to learn that it was the sulphur in the air coming out of that big chimney.

And how was your dad's work as a builder going in those early years?

He was booming as a builder.