Paul Kirby

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I was born the second child to Ernest Kilvington Kirby and Gwenneth Ruby Pearl Kirby nee Horne on 3 September 1945 in Nambour, Queensland, Australia three weeks after the accidental death of their first child. At the time, my father was a firewood supplier but in my first year he bought a dairy farm in nearby Palmwoods but there was no available electricity of telephone services. It was all handmilking but all that was shipped out was the separated cream mainly for the production of butter for export to the British Isles. Cash crops of tomatoes and beans provided. We lived on the farm until late 1954 then we swapped for a pineapple farm at nearby Eudlo but this was a failure once South Africa developed to become the major pineapple supplier to Great Britain. The outlying dairy farms fared no better when Great Britain opted, contrary to previous agreements, to source their butter from Denmark. For many decades, there has been very little farming in the Palmwoods and Eudlo areas with most of the previous farmland divided up into bush residential blocks and the sub-tropical rainforest is reclaiming the land. In August 1955, we loaded ourselves Dad, Mum, brother Russell (6) and mum's brother Graham Horne (15), and a few essential belongings into our 1927 Dodge utility conversion and headed for South Western Queensland where Dad soon found work managing sheep and cattle stations (ranches) first at "Morella" Boomi in New South Wales just across the Queensland border from Goondiwindi. In 1956, He managed "Rainmore" station, off Wyaga Road, Goondiwindi until 1962. Then onto "Newstead" Surat where I parted from the family in December 1963 to work for a Executor and Trustee Company in Brisbane doing accounting and taxation work mainly for rural properties. On 5 May 1969, I joined the Commonwealth Police in Melbourne mainly doing protective service duties at Avalon Airfield near Lara in Victoria. Following excellent results on my Constables Course in Manly, Sydney, in late January 1970 I was transferred to plainclothes investigation duties at Melbourne Headquarters. I thrived in this role being very quickly promoted to Constable First Class and then Detective Senior Constable responsible for investigations at Tullamarine International Airport. In April 1974 I was promoted to Detective Sergeant 2nd Class At the Crime Intelligence Section in Adelaide, South Australia accompanied by then with my wife. By December 1974, we became the proud owners of an inner area Federation (late 1890s) villa which we steadily renovated. In late 1975, I was promoted to Detective Sergeant 1st Class in the Investigations area. In April 1978, I was promoted to Detective Inspector in charge of all crime investigation units in South Australia and the Northern Territory. Later in 1978, the Commonwealth Police became a founding part of the Australian Federal Police. I held this position until May 1985 when I was promoted to Detective Chief Inspector (later rebranded as Detective Superintendent) to AFP HQ in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory where I performed various roles including as a policy officer to the Deputy Commissioner (Administration); occasional sensitive investigations, OIC VIP and Witness Protection Branch; Police Systems Design Project Officer In the computing area; Branch Head at the College Investigations Training Branch and later as an "umbrella" Branch Head for various units including computer training, advanced driver training, firearms training, and counter terrorism training; and over six months as Acting Commander of the Training Division. I later became Branch Head of the General Crime Intelligence Branch from which position I was attached to the 1995 restructuring team to investigate and make recommendations on the restructuring of the AFP intelligence areas. At the conclusion of that process I happily took advantage of very generous redundancy packages and retired on 15 December 1995. I spent a couple of years finishing a University Degree and a graduate diploma while supplementing my income through taxi driving which I loved. Pay was poor but I was back out in the field again actually achieving something. I worked for H&R Block for a couple of years and was conducting training for them when in March 2001, I became seriously ill to a rare autoimmune condition Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS). I spent 8 months in hospital mainly in rehabilitation but I had serious residual problems which effectively ended my employment opportunities.

My mother commenced genealogy research back in the 1980s and extensively mapped our ancestors who were born in, or migrated to, Australia and located and interviewed or otherwise obtained information of various cousins. Between my father and mother, ten of my ancestors were transported to Australia as convicts and some brought their wives with them. My mother was shocked when she found out that she had married her fifth cousin. There was absolutely no reason that she could have suspected this outcome. So I am my own sixth cousin In the early 1990s, my mother tasked me with researching our overseas connections and I have made some good inroads but I am now at a lot of brick walls as to ancestors. Every year I pick up a little more though the digitising of records for online dissemination and I am hopeful that this will continue. It beats the old days of looking at the LDS films and drawing conclusions. I notice that many people have picked up my online contributions along with my occasional mistakes. Over the years, I also picked up a lot of rubbish from other contributors and I now spend a lot of time weeding out the errors. I'm getting old now so I am making a big effort to leave behind something reliable and worthwhile for my descendants and others linking to my lines.