Firebomb BONUS | Behind the scenes

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Hello.

Behind the scenes, the reality of this podcast.

I am sitting in a walk-in wardrobe.

And I'm sitting in a room surrounded by empty Amazon boxes and beanbags.

Yeah,

you gotta make it sound better any way you can.

Exactly.

So

I thought for this bonus episode, actually, like the best thing to do would be to give people a bit of a sense of the behind the scenes, you know, what it's actually been like for you and me to make this podcast.

And so I thought maybe just to start off with, like,

do you want to talk for a minute about how all this started?

Wow.

Wow.

Well, I had just quit my job,

my full-time job, and then you came in and gave me a call.

Actually, no, I got an email from you first.

You emailed me about this story about the A ⁇ M.

And it's quite funny because it's a story that I

have been thinking about constantly and especially recent times with everything that was happening in Australia.

And it just seemed like something that

sounded just right.

It seemed like

an incredible coincidence this would happen.

I remember

when we had that phone call and we first spoke about it, what kind of blew me away was that you said that you'd even been thinking lately about whether you wanted to turn it into a screenplay or a performance of some kind.

And I was like, well, what about a podcast?

And you were like, okay.

And it just kind of happened almost straight away.

It was like, it was as if

I think that what really took me aback when we first spoke was

how much you were already so much more developed in your thinking about what this would sound like and look like as a story than I think even I was.

Yeah.

I mean, all my life, I've been growing up with the story and I had went through that kind of cultural identity crisis.

I didn't know who I really was or where I belonged.

And, you know, the restaurant in some ways became that central point of focus where I kind of found, you know, in this restaurant, I could exist as both being Australian and Chinese.

And,

you know, subsequently, the stories that I've been thinking about turning to a film, to a thing about a play and all that was really actually in some ways more about talking about my family's restaurant, actually.

It kind of completely made sense as you and I talked through it and we shared our points of views.

And in

yeah, when you think about you know where we've been on this whole journey, you know, so much of it hasn't actually

made it into the podcast.

What are the moments for you that really stick out?

So many though, do I'm trying?

Oh my gosh.

You know, one of the really nice moments, I one member of moments I remember of doing this was actually going to meet Jong Ang, actually.

For me,

that one was actually a nice moment for me in terms of meeting someone who

I felt like a lot of people saw him as a bit of an as a quirk

a bit of a

novelty it was it was really kind of weird situation about this man chasing people Nazis around with ninja outfits and seeing him on TV and how he was made kind of some ways maybe mocked a little bit by the media or not taken seriously and then to kind of meet him and see the amount of work he had put in, you know, back scenes with all the letters that he had lobbied and the communications, and just meet him as a person.

Um, I thought that for me was a nice kind of moment where I kind of went, ah, this is a story.

This is one of those real stories that we don't hear about, and we get we get to hear.

So, that was a nice moment for me.

And

he is still incredibly fit, too.

Right, he that's what struck me when

we met John.

He hasn't changed.

He looks the same as he did in those TV reports from the 80s.

He looks like he could still totally kick your ass.

Yeah.

And I love that the connection to him is through your mums, that we found him through your mum's Dim Sun group.

That's so good.

That blows my mind.

It blows my mind.

What were memorable moments for you?

Anything that kind of sticks out in terms of the journey?

There's one thing that I definitely tell people about when they ask how things have been going on the podcast.

And this was a story that I told a few people at the time.

It's when we went looking for

Jack and John Van Blitiswick's rural paramilitary

hideout out in that place about an hour north of Perth called Bindun.

What is interesting is that it's a very similar kind of country to the place where he now lives, which I thought, you know, once we found him in South Australia, I thought that's very interesting that the two places are so similar.

But it's super remote.

It's really hard to find.

You know, we were driving around looking at satellite photos and looking at these various dirt tracks that led into the bush and trying to figure out which one it was.

And then it was by talking to

David Parkinson, the police officer who used to work at the counterterrorism, you know, protective services unit at WA Police,

you know, he was the one who used to go out there and spy on them from his mate's property.

So I called him up, and he's the one who then

connected us up with that mate, who was actually just hanging out in Jinjin, a neighboring town at the time.

And he said, oh, yeah, I'll show you where it is.

And then we had this hilarious sort of

convoy

of

this old bushy.

I think he even described himself as a cocky, you know, like a the you know, a bush farmer.

And

he drove us out, you know, we followed his old ute out through the, along the scrubby tracks.

He gave us two us, he gave us two-way radios.

That's right.

Yeah, he's, you know, commentating as he's going.

He goes, oh, you know, there's a,

he would say things like,

oh, the trees have grown a fair bit here.

You think you used to be able to see through the scrub here?

We'll just go a little bit further on over, you know, and and then we're getting closer and closer and he would stop the car and then all of a sudden we were, you know, out the front of the out the front of the place.

I mean we found it eventually.

We thought that we had not been able to find it.

You know, it's a totally secluded country back road.

I remember a car coming up.

to meet us and it ended up being the current owners of the block and it was this really awkward conversation and you know trying to explain why you and I were standing there with these microphones and and anyway it was extremely um

surprising unusual it felt like we didn't know what the current owners

would say if we were there turned out that everything was fine but at the time I felt like it could have gone

it could have gone pear-shaped quite easily but it didn't which is good and we never quite got to go on the property and have a bit of an explore, but you know, maybe that's for another time.

I wanted to ask you a little bit, you know, some of this whole reporting process I imagine would have been pretty strange for you.

And some of it came about in some like really unexpected ways.

Like this interview with Mark Ferguson.

We didn't think that we were going to be able to speak to anyone that was, you know, in Jack's inner circle during those during that period from the late 80s.

We tried basically

everybody that was you know by his side at that time and

there were others that we just couldn't find and it was like five minutes to midnight we were like writing the scripts for these episodes and then you know our producer gets this

manages to find this guy and there was this there's this hilarious situation where I remember you and I are sort of sitting in a studio in Perth.

Our colleagues in Sydney had organized for Mark to come in for a coffee at the cafe just downstairs from the ABC.

And the plan was basically just to ask him if he was up for doing an interview.

And if he was, to do it sort of right then and there.

And then all of a sudden, it's just like,

he said, yes, we're coming inside.

The interview is going to start in five minutes.

It was like, yes, Mark's on.

And I just remember, you know,

I was really surprised, I was excited, but totally was, I mean, you know, we usually prepare briefs and we're usually writing questions out.

And I was kind of caught off guard, to be honest, I guess.

I wasn't quite ready to, I guess, in some ways I was always prepared to talk to Jack because I had this common ground with Jack that I wanted to kind of really probe and squeeze.

But, you know, Mark Ferguson, sitting there listening to him it was it was

surreal and eerie because i his voice hadn't changed it sounded a little bit older a little bit more gravelly but it was that same voice that i remember from watching him on tv you know like we couldn't see him yeah

we couldn't see him i i you know i all i could do was hear and i was invisible i felt almost in someone's a bit invisible still

and that was a little bit kind of hard for me to kind of grasp because a part of me in this whole process of doing this podcast to talk to people who were former members of A ⁇ M I wanted to be in front of them I wanted to

let them see me and then let them kind of react of that and I want to see them and let see how I would feel

and to not have that moment to kind of be there, to be in front of each other, to kind of really,

it meant that my words or whatever I said through that mic had to somehow hit if I was to get what I wanted and I went blank in some ways at that moment so neither of us could see Mark because he's in this studio in Sydney but I got a description from our colleagues like did they they told us mark was just sitting like

deathly still in this interview so still that the sensor lights in the studio turned off and so our colleagues colleagues in Sydney have told us this story of like watching Mark answer our questions describing how you know he's come home from the races and

found all of you know Vantongren's petrol soaked clothing the night that he's torched your family restaurant

and he's just sitting there in the dark deathly still telling these stories and I they just said it was the it was a weird situation

yeah

I mean

it was I just remember it was something that was very palpable given the distance that that lead up to us doing the interview when we could hear him in the studio getting ready and everyone's trying to test their mics

and it's like can you hear me yes I can hear you yep yep hi mate hey hey there was this incredible tangible kind of tension in the air that I could feel, given that we were so far away from each other and not being able to see each other.

And flipping from that,

I want to hear what

your thoughts about our trip to the men's health retreat.

I want to kind of hear your thoughts on that because all I remember,

aside from interviewing Ben and all that, I really enjoyed just watching you in action with your microphone and your

and your headphones.

So, I kind of want to hear what's going through your mind when you're going from that.

I was

very much along for the ride.

I think I

had thought when we went there that I would probably be able to be a bit more of

an observer, maybe,

but I think I ended up participating a lot more than I had anticipated.

And this one moment in particular that I'm sure is the moment that you're thinking of,

which is when we're doing the yoga down by the lake.

And

it's the bit where everyone's chanting and

shouting into each other's faces.

And

we had to look into each other's faces and just like bellow as hard as we can.

And we're being asked asked to you know scream out that deepest hurt you've ever felt and everybody screams and I remember looking at you and I had to just like scream into my toes instead of your face if I'd seen your face in that moment I would have absolutely pissed myself and I wouldn't have been able to stop it would have been it would have been bad so I'm really glad that I held it together and

Yeah, and then we had to hug afterwards for like a minute.

You know, I felt like we really connected in that moment.

that was a nice moment it was a nice moment yeah i was i was staring at your shoulder the entire time when we had to to scream personally for me and i think for you also it didn't that's what not what we both needed and and that's why i think we reacted the way we did at that particular point but you're absolutely right though you know

when we did that sharing circle

And watching actually them doing everyone doing the ice baths as well like the incredible kind of camaraderie that was forged in that moment in those moments and and hearing all the men's stories was really touching and really um

and also extremely scary for us i think for me trying to decide on the spot at that moment whether to

what to say in front of everyone to ben oh yeah

you blew me away when you started talking about that i i mean i legit had no idea what you were going to say and

you just started talking and i was like holy shit he's doing it.

He's actually doing it.

He's, he's going.

Oh, my God.

He's going there.

And you did.

And I was just, I mean, I still tell people about that moment.

That's just totally incredible.

Yeah, I

really,

yeah, it was scary.

It was extremely scary.

I really did not know how, I had no idea how.

anyone was going to react at that point.

And

I just had to kind of just, I just thought, well, if everyone's, if everyone's being truthful, I might as well do the same.

So

it did that.

What was it like to be on the road in South Australia?

It was a mixture of excitement and dread

and almost, you know, and occasionally moments of, what the fuck am I doing here?

Yeah.

You know,

I really wanted to see Jack.

I really wanted to meet him.

I genuinely, really wanted to meet him.

And I was really hoping that it would happen.

It was surreal to know that we were driving in the middle of South Australia to go and see him.

Was there a particular thing about that trip in South Australia?

You said at times it was like,

you know, like adventurous, and other times you're like, what the fuck am I doing here?

Were there any like particular locations, incidents,

moments that sort of stick out to you there?

We went to one of the neighboring towns

near where Jack lived and we were asking the questions around the businesses.

I thought it was such an eerie feeling walking to those businesses.

And when we started asking questions about this place called Hobbit Haunt, Hobbits Haunt, if they knew who those people, who lived there and all that, just the way that it was just straight out of a movie.

You know, like you could almost imagine the people kind of closing the shutters on the doors or the windows, like going,

we don't want to talk about this.

We don't want to, you know, it was this sense of tension, this sense of the eyes darting back and forth of each other.

You know, it was what was not being said

between the lines.

It was just a way that there was this kind of unease or this kind of like suspicion that everyone had.

And the fact that you're walking from business to business and everyone had that same reaction, it was just such a surreal kind of moment.

I mean, it's telling when one of the locals said, it's like, you know, you only come up this way either to farm or to hide.

Yeah, yeah.

What did she say?

It was about the quality of the land that Jack's property is on.

They said people come out to this place to do one of two things, to farm or to hide, and that block is shit farming country.

That's what she said.

Exactly what she said.

Yeah, it did all feel a little bit dicey out there.

Yeah, it did.

I wanted to ask you, are you dreaming about Jack Van Tongeren yet?

I did have a dream about him once.

I have dreams about more like about John Van Blitiswick's name and mispronouncing it again and again and again and again, like trapped in some kind of layer of hell.

So if anything I'm dreaming about that then Jake Van Tongren.

What was the Van Tongren dream?

It was one of those things where we're standing in a distance and we kind of saw each other and there was this acknowledgement, but it wasn't, I can't remember the conversation was, I can't remember where it led.

It was just one of those things where I just remember him

us us kind of physically crossing paths, which, you know, we never got that chance in this podcast to have that experience.

That's so interesting.

It's probably a bit of an insight into what was going through your, what's been going through your head a lot, right?

Well, it's a scenario that, you know, I've been preparing for for almost this whole entire podcast from the moment when, I mean, I remember that there was a one time when we were talking about at the beginning of doing this project.

Yes, you asked at one point, you know, if we could

find an opportunity, if we did find jack would you be prepared to

to go and talk to him

and i i had to take a moment to just kind of go

you know

would i

um although i have kind of

imagined that scenario for many years to be honest since since some of the early days when i first did some research on him and i thought it would be he was such an interesting character interesting person to talk to about you know given his background.

Yeah, but you were up for it right from the start.

That was one of the things that I was super surprised about, you know, when we first started talking.

And

I'm like, okay, you know, what do you think?

Should we work on this thing together?

You know, if we do, then there's a real possibility that we might end up actually, you know, going out to try to find these people and put some questions to them.

How do you feel about that?

And

I think I was actually really surprised that even in those early conversations,

you were just up for it.

You were like,

this is so clearly something you've been thinking about for such a long period of time.

It was like you'd actually been imagining that possibility yourself for a long time.

It was a very cleansing moment when you asked me that question, dude, because no one's actually ever asked me that.

And so when you said that, it really was a kind of moment of truth.

And

maybe in your, when you heard it very quickly, in my head, I think things were moving at a very slow pace, just like watching myself say that.

It's a, it's a pretty, it was a, it's a scary step.

But I mean, my reasons for doing it, you know, it wasn't just to face, this wasn't just me facing a

white supremacist, though.

You know, this wasn't me just confronting a neo-Nazi and talking.

I mean, for me, this was more than just that.

It was really talking to another person who

I identified to a certain extent with

to a very,

a very small inch of this person's psyche that I kind of went,

I want to know more about that.

And I want to just find out more from him and understand him a little bit more.

I mean, look, it would be naive to think that somehow I was going to find an answer that would satisfy everything that I'm after.

It would be naive to think that this man was going to somehow be be redeemed in front of my eyes.

He's going to apologize or he's going to

regret what he's done or he's going to or we're going to become best buddies or something like that.

That wasn't the outcome.

Do you feel like you've come away from this empty-handed?

Not at all.

That's okay.

I mean, that's, I mean, that's, no, I haven't.

No, I have not come away empty-handed at all.

And,

you know, it's the journey.

So like if you did, so you didn't, yeah, you didn't get to speak to Jack, but

what did you get?

You know, you didn't get to kind of talk him, talk to him about these

weird

points at which your seemingly like totally opposite lives

actually kind of intersect in

some really significant ways.

You didn't get to talk to him about that.

But so what

did you get?

You know what it is?

I think it's actually, if anything, show me something is that actually Jack is not the person that was going to give me the answers to what I'm asking or trying to inquire about or trying to understand.

And, you know, it was really, you know, one thing that really kind of

I appreciate from doing this was actually connecting with people like the Changs,

connecting with

Lin from the restaurant.

It was finding a community within this event of people who have had experiences with this and talking about it and sharing our feelings.

I think that's something that has been missing in

my life and finding out from the Chungs that we haven't talked about this for our whole lives and we've known each other for our whole lives.

To have that channel open and hoping that this story resonates with other people in the community outside.

and getting that dialogue going about saying, hey, you know, let's talk about this in in a frank way.

I think that's what Jack's done is help open a dialogue through this process, through this journey.

And I think that for that generation who were born in the 70s and 80s in Australia to migrant parents, you know, we didn't have the internet back then.

We didn't have resources outside of our own worlds, of our own communities, of our own families, our own houses to kind of process what was happening around us.

We had a hostile group of people that were telling us that we didn't belong here.

And

we couldn't talk about it because we didn't know how to, and we didn't know who to.

And so,

if anything, just search for Jack.

And, you know, I wish Jack had the same conversations.

Maybe he wouldn't have turned out the way he did.

You know, once again, you know, and that's what I mean, you know.

So

if anything, that's what Jack has done,

has done for me without having to meet him

you said it was like an invisible history what does it mean to make it visible you know

did you always feel like this was a really important time at the moment to speak about it

you know I think that

now with COVID with tensions geopolitically I think it is important to kind of acknowledge the

complex layers of community in our country.

we need to stop talking about, you know, these kind of black and white lines about who is the other and who is

authentic

and see all those.

And I think that's something that we

have a lot to work on still.

And I think, like,

you know, coming from me, from my background as an actor, I think diversity in representation in our cultural landscape in Australia is one way of kind of making sure that people see us and see us as being visible, that we're not just seen as the new migrants, but there's also a rich tapestry of new and old generations of families with different backgrounds and how we've all kind of integrated in different wonderful ways in society.

I think that's really important to acknowledge that and see that.

And maybe that will help us acknowledge or understand or how to navigate through some of the issues that we're dealing with beyond our shores.

Well put.

And what about like, do you have a feeling about why or if it's been important to talk about Van Tongren's story and what happened to your family today?

I think it's two things.

You know, I think that we didn't take Van Tongren A ⁇ M seriously back then.

We thought there was some kind of nullity.

We don't take, I don't think we've taken far-right extremism or white nationalism as serious,

seriously back then.

And maybe it's not enough yet now.

I think sometimes you can't help but feel like sometimes

these guys are just seen as a bunch of hooligans still that they're not as seen as being dangerous.

And

that needs to be addressed.

When it comes down to telling the story from

the point of view of my community, I think it's important to let the new generations know about what happened back then and what were some of the deficiencies about how we talked as a community.

And hopefully, now

we're more better equipped, that we have

a stronger voice and a stronger sense of ourselves that we can say, look, collectively, you know, we can't stand for this.

You know, we can't be the model minority that we have to just say, hey, look, we're part of this community and we need to actually make sure that

these neo-Nazis don't take these streets away from us.

Given your

reporting on this stuff, what do you think are the kind of warning signs that people should be looking out for today?

Like

areas where these groups are growing in strength or trying to recruit?

I would say that today's groups are doing very much the same thing that Jack Van Tongeren did back in the day, which is that they're inserting themselves into these fault lines in in general society.

But the difference is the sort of speed at which people can be radicalized and also the pathways into that level of radicalization where people might feel justified in taking some kind of radical action.

Those are much more varied now today as well.

And so I think what you're seeing is you know, far-right groups inserting themselves into everything from

debate around whether or not drag queens should be allowed to read stories to children in libraries, something called drag storytime.

There's some crazy stuff happening in the US around that.

Far-right groups targeting those storytime events at public libraries.

The same sort of thing is happening here in Australia.

Debates around stuff like that.

around the trans rights debate, around COVID lockdowns, just sort of that slippery slope, I think, is much slipperier today than it used to be.

I think we could probably wrap things up there.

I think I just want to say, look, basically, thank you for doing this with me, Chris.

And I've learnt so much from you.

It's been a really special experience.

for me personally and I'd also just like to say thanks to everyone who's followed this story, including this meandering conversation of a bonus episode.

And I would just like to say that if you have enjoyed this series and you want to listen to the next one, to be the first to get the next season of Unravel, whenever it does come out, just make sure that you follow the Unravel True Crime podcast wherever you're listening at the moment.

And as always, of course, you can find it on the ABC Listen app.

Thank you.

Until the next podcast adventure, cheers, mate.