When a supercharged 1972 Chevrolet Camaro went missing from Araluen Street in Fisher on August 11, underwriter Assetinsure hired Dale Coleman to do some digging before paying out the cash.

While most investigations rely on interviews and surveillance, cars are notoriously difficult to find, and Dale Coleman, from Dale Coleman Investigations, has reached out to the public for help, asking anyone who has seen the vehicle to get in touch.

"Because the car's very unique, if it was a late model Camry or late model Commodore no one's going to have seen it. Whereas this vehicle is very distinctive," he said, adding that the supercharger on the bonnet would be so loud it would be impossible to miss.

These kinds of jobs, from insurance companies, make up the bulk of a private investigator's work in Canberra. Dennis Bagic, director of Eyecon Investigations, is paid by insurance brokers to track down workers who are claiming the loss of earnings after an injury.

"I'll paint a picture of the claimant who says he can't do anything, stays at home totally incapacitated and therefore can't work," Mr Bagic says, of one person he tailed after he made claims on a back injury.

"So all of the days that I did surveillance on him, he would be first of all dropping off his wife at work, and then going for a 7 kilometre walk around a lake in the mornings, and then getting a cup of coffee from several locations and then coming home. Then he might go out again to the shops. On Sunday he was observed kayaking up and down a dam and fishing from within the actual kayak."

Mr Bagic said people often get caught out with what he calls "confusion issues". In one example, he says: "It was supposed to be a left wrist injury, however the claimant was wearing his compression bandage over his right wrist, and that was only for half the time."

Canberrans also don't take suspicions of a cheating spouse lightly.

"A lot of the work in Canberra is surveillance of cheating partners, lots of that," Dan Halpin, director at Conventus Group, says.

"[I've also] picked up a job from an old pensioner who's concerned about his will. He's getting older, wants to track down beneficiaries and other people he wants to keep out of his will, so he wants to know where they are, what they're doing."

But "surveillance-aware" Canberrans can be particularly tricky people to investigate, both Mr Bagic and Mr Halpin say, putting it down to the local presence of agencies like ASIS and the AFP.