NO DAY LOOKS THE SAME FOR KABEL DAWES, BUT IT’S NOT ALL SUITS AND FAST CARS

When local private investigator Kabel Dawes was a small boy, he wanted to be a police detective.

A child of the ‘80s, he grew up on a steady diet of TV shows like Magnum PI, The Rockford Files, MacGyver,

and The Professionals.

It was little wonder his dream was to be out and about, investigating.

“But it didn’t work out that way,” Kabel says.

“I fell into studying law, and thought it was what I wanted.

“I tried it, but discovered it was not for me.”

To his family’s shock, Kabel left law and followed his dream.

“[They thought] I was chasing some childhood fantasy of driving Ferraris and [wearing] Hawaiian shirts,” he explains.

That was 13 years ago, and while work comes and goes in waves, Kabel has never looked back.

“I am the only investigator/ commercial agent for [my business] Dawes Investigations,” he says.

“I have always worked alone.” Fast car chases and expensive suits aren’t really part of his job, however.

As Kabel explained in an interview with The Chronicle in 2008, many of the happenings in detective TV shows are highly illegal.

“What you see in Magnum PI will get you thrown in jail,” Kabel is quoted as saying.

“Breaking into people’s houses will get you in jail; carrying a gun will get you in jail; and car chases will get you a long list of traffic offences, if not jail.”

Much of what he does nowadays are factual investigations.

“As part of the Certificate III, I was trained to do surveillance, so when I first started work I did do surveillance and follow people around,” Kabel explains.

Back in 2008, he told The Chronicle about one particular surveillance case where he was hired by a suspicious wife whose husband was withdrawing large amounts of money from their account.

Kabel followed the husband from bar to bar, making a few clothing changes along the way.

“I wore daggy clothes and posed as a bar fly,” Kabel told the journalist.

“But it turned out the husband was going from bar to bar playing the pokies all day and having a few drinks — it wasn’t as sinister as his wife first thought.”

These days, the focus is on factual

I was chasing some childhood fantasy of driving Ferraris and Hawaiian shirts.”

PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR

KABEL DAWES