Firebomb 06 | Track Jack

Speaker 1 ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music, and more.

Speaker 2 Just before we start, this episode contains some strong language and descriptions of violence.

Speaker 3 So, since the start of this project, I've been wanting to track down Jack Van Tongren, the leader of the neo-Nazi gang.

Speaker 5 For months, our team has been looking for clues that might help.

Speaker 9 Morning, must be very early there. Yeah, it's still dark out here.

Speaker 10 And then we get a break.

Speaker 2 Okay, so on Friday, I spoke to A ⁇ M guy.

Speaker 12 Dunya Karagich is our producer, and she's found someone who used to be close to Jack.

Speaker 2 He just volunteered a lot of info on the phone, like a lot.

Speaker 2 Obviously, don't know how true bits of it are.

Speaker 7 He was one of the other members of the A ⁇ M.

Speaker 2 He's still very, very racist and doesn't seem like he regrets anything he did at all.

Speaker 13 Dunya says she asked him about an attack during the 80s that she'd heard about.

Speaker 2 And he just started hysterically laughing and said, yeah, that was me.

Speaker 17 This guy is the closest we've got to Jack so far.

Speaker 3 And while he doesn't want to do an interview, it turns out he still talks to Jack sometimes.

Speaker 2 They still seem to be, you know, fine and in touch.

Speaker 13 Jack is 75 years old now.

Speaker 18 So in my mind, he should be slowing down, maybe even just chilling out a bit.

Speaker 20 But what Dunya says next kind of makes me worry.

Speaker 2 He said that he's not alone. He says he's got a group of half a dozen blokes that live with him over there, young men with failed marriages.
And I said, What's he doing with these guys?

Speaker 2 And he, the exact words, were preparing the next generation.

Speaker 21 Oh, wow.

Speaker 22 Okay,

Speaker 22 that's unexpected.

Speaker 23 We don't know if there's any truth to this or what he really means by it.

Speaker 8 But just in case,

Speaker 3 whatever we do next,

Speaker 20 we're going to have to be careful.

Speaker 25 This is not the kind of property that we're going to have a door to knock on.

Speaker 28 That's the track.

Speaker 29 That's running up the fence line. There'll be an entry just up here.

Speaker 19 Hobbits Haunt.

Speaker 30 What the f.

Speaker 30 But do you see the way they look at each other? I just darting back and forth.

Speaker 21 I get the sense that they know a little bit more than they told us. Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.

Speaker 32 Yeah, I am.

Speaker 33 Okay, here we go.

Speaker 34 This is Firebomb, the latest season of the ABC's Unravel podcast,

Speaker 36 episode 6:

Speaker 37 Track Jack.

Speaker 13 While me and Alex and the team try to work out exactly where Jack is now, I'm also trying to learn as much as I can about what drives him and where he came from.

Speaker 41 Ever since I was at uni, I've been intrigued by this carefully curated brand that Jack Van Tongren had built for himself.

Speaker 18 His well-groomed mustache, his hair, his military-style boots and uniform, and how he likes to talk about how he fought in the Vietnam War.

Speaker 11 So that's where I decided to start, with the war.

Speaker 36 And the guy who served with Jack.

Speaker 32 Well, the first time I met Jack was

Speaker 32 when we were training up Townsville, before we went to Vietnam.

Speaker 41 Bob Bacon remembers Jack Van Tongren well.

Speaker 42 The two fought together in Vietnam back in the early 70s.

Speaker 32 He

Speaker 43 He says that once they got to Vietnam, Jack's small size and lack of physical strength became a bit of an issue.

Speaker 15 In his opinion, Jack wasn't particularly cut out for the battlefield.

Speaker 32 Jack wasn't a great soldier because he couldn't take the weight and all that we had to carry.

Speaker 32 He was always puffing and pinning. I mean, Jack couldn't go without water.

Speaker 32 We'd stop for a break, and Jack would just about drink a penny can of water in one go. He couldn't ration his water.

Speaker 32 So I had to carry some for him.

Speaker 5 Bob says he and the other soldiers mostly got along fine with Jack.

Speaker 41 But over time, Jack became a target for their ribbing and pranks.

Speaker 32 Jack was

Speaker 32 easily fooled. I mean, you could pull pranks on him.

Speaker 35 There's this one prank Bob pulled while Jack was asleep.

Speaker 42 It was the middle of the night, and Bob and the other blokes decided to target the one thing that was most distinctive about Jack.

Speaker 12 One of the things that he treasured most.

Speaker 32 Anyhow, when we went out the next morning, our boss was calling the roll. It was a silly grin on his face, and he said to Jack, you'd better go and have a look in the mirror.

Speaker 32 So Jack went out in the mirror, and he came back and he was fuming.

Speaker 7 Bob and the other soldiers had shaved off half his mustache.

Speaker 32 Jack's pride and joy was his mustache and he took it pretty badly too, just quietly.

Speaker 6 Despite this, Bob says he got along well enough with Jack.

Speaker 38 The two even shared a hoochie or army tent and they'd talk for hours at night.

Speaker 32 Oh, he was just

Speaker 32 eccentric. He knew he knew a lot of stuff.
Well, he thought he knew a lot. I mean,

Speaker 32 we'd lay in the jungle every night and he'd be talking about the stars. That's Alpha Centauri, that's Alva Vega, and this is such, and he'd point out all the stars and all that.

Speaker 3 Bob says that at this stage, there was no sign Jack had Nazi sympathies.

Speaker 44 I mean, I get the impression from talking with Bob that Jack wasn't particularly brutal or racist.

Speaker 15 I mean, not in a way that stuck out at least.

Speaker 40 He was just a small soldier who was easy to make fun of.

Speaker 38 But Bob says Vietnam did change people in different ways.

Speaker 32 Jack was always eccentric, but Vietnam probably had something to do with him falling over the wrong side of the fence. I'm not saying it did, I'm not saying it didn't, but

Speaker 32 it wouldn't surprise me if it did. Put it that way.

Speaker 4 There's this article we found that can give us some clues to this.

Speaker 41 It was a long article written in 1990 by Jack's mum, Stella Van Tongren, and it's called Making of a Racist.

Speaker 17 As soon as we found it, Alex and I jumped on a call to read it together.

Speaker 49 Are you reading this, Crispian?

Speaker 50 I am reading this.

Speaker 50 Wow.

Speaker 51 Sort of goes some way to answering some of your questions.

Speaker 31 Yeah.

Speaker 41 Jack's mum writes about how much he had changed after Vietnam.

Speaker 43 She was a university trained psychologist and she could see how the stress and trauma of what he had seen was affecting him.

Speaker 35 She tells how he became even more isolated after his brother died and his best friend got married.

Speaker 7 And then it's at around this time that he was introduced to some Nazi literature.

Speaker 24 In one sense, this is a very, very familiar story, you know, like social isolation, trauma, Somebody gives you a book to read, you know, that offers a possible explanation for, hey, you know, you're feeling hard done by, well, it's not your fault.

Speaker 54 You know, join the club.

Speaker 25 It's such a familiar radicalization pathway.

Speaker 31 It's how people today are radicalized.

Speaker 42 But there's something in this article that still gets me every time I think about it.

Speaker 45 And it blows people's minds when I tell them this.

Speaker 11 Stella Van Tongeren reveals one of Jack's deepest contradictions, and that's the fact that Jack was actually part Asian himself.

Speaker 46 Jack's dad was born in Indonesia, his parents were both part Dutch and part Javanese.

Speaker 11 So, Jack was a neo-Nazi white supremacist with Asian heritage.

Speaker 7 I'd read about Jack's Javanese background many years ago, and that fact has always fascinated me.

Speaker 11 But it wasn't until I read this article by Jack's mum that I realized just how central that might be to this whole story.

Speaker 47 Because she writes in this article that just like me, Jack got teased for being Asian when he was a kid.

Speaker 56 It's so surreal that this is the voice of Jack Van Tongren's mother.

Speaker 50 This definitely gives that family insight on who is his anti-aging campaign is now common knowledge, but a psychologist might suggest that in an attempt to drive Asians out of society,

Speaker 50 which he identified, he was in fact trying to drive the Asian out of himself.

Speaker 54 Well.

Speaker 54 Yeah.

Speaker 50 It makes me feel sorry for him in some ways. I think I understand

Speaker 16 the self-hate that you can get when you've been made so inferior.

Speaker 50 Even his family couldn't stop him.

Speaker 16 Even with this amount of depth and breadth of knowledge about and intimate knowledge about him, even they couldn't bring him around.

Speaker 16 His hatred must be so damn fucking deep.

Speaker 47 There's a lot of self-hatred there.

Speaker 16 I've touched a little bit of that going through growing up when you're getting teased and you have a little bit of inferiority complex, but him to go down to that level that deep that it's a deep dark hole

Speaker 3 i wish we could have spoken to jack's mum about all of this but she died years ago

Speaker 13 and anyway i i feel like to really get into Jack's head, we need to find someone who was even closer to him than all these people we've heard from so far.

Speaker 35 Someone who wasn't just a follower of Jack's group.

Speaker 13 What we need is someone who was in his inner circle.

Speaker 58 But they're not easy to find.

Speaker 28 Call failed.

Speaker 31 Yep. Okay, the next one.

Speaker 55 We try calling every number we can find for nearly every person who got locked up with Jack.

Speaker 28 Okay, one more, let's try this one.

Speaker 44 And for a while, it looks like we failed.

Speaker 28 Okay, um.

Speaker 45 And then all of a sudden, we find someone. He unexpectedly agrees to come into a Sydney studio for an interview, like immediately.

Speaker 7 And so...

Speaker 6 With little time to prepare, before we know it, we're talking to him down the line from Perth.

Speaker 63 I can indeed and I've also got with me Crispian Chan.

Speaker 62 Okay.

Speaker 64 G'day Mark.

Speaker 62 How are you?

Speaker 65 Good mate.

Speaker 7 It was strange to hear this guy's voice again.

Speaker 41 His name is Mark Ferguson and I remember him from the TV reports when I was a kid.

Speaker 10 After the gang got locked up, he became this sort of de facto voice on the inside workings and thinking of the AM.

Speaker 2 Were they even worried they might kill someone?

Speaker 66 Well, they set about it and chose their targets very, very carefully so that that would not happen.

Speaker 26 And now he's here in a studio speaking to me about how he and Jack first met.

Speaker 62 I knew Jack for a couple of years before I went to Perth, which was in November 1986, and I was going to stay at his place for two weeks and I ended up staying

Speaker 62 for a number of years.

Speaker 62 5,000 posters would go up on a Saturday night. He was very good at organising that.

Speaker 62 He could convince people that they had to do something and they'd pay for their petrol and they'd pay for the posters.

Speaker 45 Mark became something of a propaganda ideas man for the Australian nationalist movement.

Speaker 7 He still seems to be in favour of reducing immigration from Asia and weirdly still wants credit for some of the racist poster slogans he created for the A ⁇ M in the 80s.

Speaker 62 I came up with the idea of 700,000 Asians, 700,000 unemployed.

Speaker 41 Mark was only ever convicted of relatively minor offences, not the fire bombings. He says when the gang turned to arson, he kept his distance.

Speaker 11 And then Alex starts asking some more probing questions.

Speaker 41 So I listen in from my corner of the Perth studio and I'm kind of holding my breath.

Speaker 62 I was into the propaganda and fully into the propaganda but didn't really want to have anything whatsoever to do with the terrorism.

Speaker 60 You would call it that?

Speaker 63 You'd call it terrorism?

Speaker 62 Well of course it is. You can't call it anything else can you?

Speaker 68 Do you accept that the things that you did in the 80s contributed to this environment in which people felt justified in committing violent acts against the Chinese community?

Speaker 62 Yes, well

Speaker 62 it's a very unfortunate thing that that's what what it descended into.

Speaker 67 It's kind of a passive way of describing it though, right, that things descended into

Speaker 68 that you were a part of, you know, you hastened that descent.

Speaker 69 Well,

Speaker 62 that's the way the situation is, I

Speaker 32 have to concede.

Speaker 67 What did you think was going to happen when you're putting all these posters up around Perth saying, you know, Asians out or racial war?

Speaker 62 Well,

Speaker 62 I never wrote that one about the racial war.

Speaker 67 Sure, but you were around putting the posters on.

Speaker 62 Yes, well, I certainly was.

Speaker 64 Do you think the images would have dehumanised that particular group?

Speaker 62 Well,

Speaker 62 you could assume it that way, yes.

Speaker 70 But the project failed, didn't it?

Speaker 68 I mean, you know, your program was to end Asian migration or to slow it down to a trickle to Australia.

Speaker 70 And that project completely failed, didn't it?

Speaker 62 Well, but Paula did, and

Speaker 62 there's no denying that.

Speaker 61 So it's kind of a waste of time and unnecessary trauma.

Speaker 60 Do you accept that?

Speaker 62 Well,

Speaker 62 it looks as though it certainly is that, doesn't it?

Speaker 68 Can I ask, have you ever spoken to a victim of your activities before?

Speaker 62 Well, I'm obviously talking to one in the background there, Christian, isn't it? Is it Christian?

Speaker 69 Christian?

Speaker 69 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 62 Well this is the first occasion.

Speaker 60 What's it like to have Crispian sitting here now?

Speaker 62 Well

Speaker 62 the thing about Lizbel it's most uncomfortable

Speaker 62 the situation of course.

Speaker 70 For you or for Crispian?

Speaker 62 Well for me for me and obviously for him also.

Speaker 4 It's hard for me to know what to say.

Speaker 7 I'm mostly just sort of sitting there stunned as I listen to Alex and him go back and forth.

Speaker 13 And while I'm trying to make sense of that exchange, Mark tells us something pretty surreal.

Speaker 13 The night this whole saga started, the night that Jack burned down my family's restaurant, Mark says he was actually at Jack's house.

Speaker 62 I went to a trotting meeting on a Wednesday night at York and I got back 11.30, quarter to 12 and I smelt petrol.

Speaker 69 And I thought, what's that?

Speaker 70 And were they sitting inside or you could just...

Speaker 62 No, there was no one there. And I opened up the door and I went out to the toilet.

Speaker 62 And I smelled, what's this?

Speaker 62 And this is

Speaker 62 how bizarre Jack was. He didn't even dispose of the petrol,

Speaker 62 the clothing with the petrol on it. And I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 69 Anyway.

Speaker 61 You come home and there's this like

Speaker 67 overalls, smell of petrol, all the rest of it.

Speaker 61 And Jack's not disposing of evidence.

Speaker 67 I mean, were you surprised that the police weren't onto this straight away?

Speaker 62 Yes, yes.

Speaker 62 But

Speaker 62 I'm surprised that the police didn't come around and knock on the door after the second one.

Speaker 62 I really am surprised that they didn't do it.

Speaker 63 I mean,

Speaker 70 why are you surprised?

Speaker 60 What sort of...

Speaker 70 Yeah, why are you surprised that they went around earlier?

Speaker 62 Well, because, you know, they have this great investigation.

Speaker 62 And if I was an officer in charge, like after the second one, I'd be knocking on Jack's door because of the profile of what they were saying.

Speaker 61 What would they have found if they'd done that?

Speaker 62 Well, I'll put it this way. There wouldn't have been the third or a fourth one if they would have went after the second one.

Speaker 62 That's what wouldn't have happened.

Speaker 45 Mark could have tried to stop it too, but instead it went on and on.

Speaker 6 I'm kind of done with hearing from Mark.

Speaker 55 What I really want to know now is more about Jack.

Speaker 26 How does it feel to know that Jack himself is part Asian himself?

Speaker 64 How do you think Jack understood and reconciled with that fact about him?

Speaker 62 Yeah, well, it was an anomaly,

Speaker 62 to say the least.

Speaker 62 And

Speaker 62 people and other members used to think, well, what have we got ourselves into here and have a bit of a joke?

Speaker 32 But

Speaker 62 it was the overriding factor rather than him and his ethnicity

Speaker 62 that pushed us along.

Speaker 64 I mean given the things that given what happened to my family

Speaker 64 I myself of course experienced that attack you know it it got me to look at who I was

Speaker 64 and questioned and made me have tensions about who I how I perceived myself and

Speaker 6 I wondered whether

Speaker 64 something happened in Jack's life growing up that might have explained perhaps his own perception of himself as well and his kind of reconciliation with his identity.

Speaker 62 Well, you're on the right track there,

Speaker 62 and I've tried to analyse and I've spoken to other people who knew him well,

Speaker 62 and we can never

Speaker 62 ascertain or come to a conclusion why it is that he chose the path he did.

Speaker 4 Well, that's what I'm trying to figure out.

Speaker 17 Why he chose the path he did and what he's doing now.

Speaker 13 And it seems if we're going to answer those questions, we're going to need to find them.

Speaker 32 The last time I seen Jack in Australia was on the 18th of August

Speaker 32 2022 in Byron Bay.

Speaker 17 Jack's old army mate Bob says he still sees Jack from time to time at army reunions.

Speaker 32 He's still got his moustache.

Speaker 32 He did grow back after he shaved it off, shaved half it off.

Speaker 18 And from what he says, it sounds like Jack's still pretty extreme in his thinking.

Speaker 32 Jack was

Speaker 69 talking to me about, you know, the Second World War.

Speaker 32 He reckons the Holocaust, and that didn't actually happen. Jack said that was all propaganda.
It never actually happened.

Speaker 32 And, you know, so

Speaker 32 his attitude is. He's definitely a neo-Nazi now, you know.

Speaker 70 What do you know about where Jack is now?

Speaker 69 Well,

Speaker 32 he just wanted to get away from society, so he bought this

Speaker 32 virtually desert,

Speaker 32 and he's put everything on it. Last year, he put a tower on it, so he could get mobile reception.
He put all water in that, and he grows all his own vegetables.

Speaker 32 He just finished building a roundhouse and he just lives out there and does his own thing. and

Speaker 32 I don't think he comes into contact with too many people.

Speaker 18 When Bob says this I'm thinking that's not what we've heard

Speaker 41 but I decide to stay quiet.

Speaker 35 I'm hoping Bob's right.

Speaker 21 One of the things that we're thinking of doing is actually going and speaking to Jack.

Speaker 32 I don't know if he'd

Speaker 32 He'd talk to you or not. I'm not saying he wouldn't,

Speaker 32 but I warn you there if

Speaker 32 you do expect some strange responses

Speaker 41 I asked Bob if he thought Jack had any regrets about what he did to my community and to my family I'd say no

Speaker 32 to be quite honest I'd say no

Speaker 32 and what makes you think that what have you observed oh he just hasn't changed he's like in the last time I've known him he's still got that

Speaker 32 Jack attitude, Jack Van Dogger attitude, but I could be wrong.

Speaker 32 But it's just the opinion I got

Speaker 32 spending so much time at him knowing him that it's just my opinion.

Speaker 7 We asked, but Bob Bacon didn't know Jack's exact home address.

Speaker 17 We've tried to find Jack ourselves, but he's a bit of a ghost online.

Speaker 14 What our research did establish, though, is that Jack likes to send Christmas cards, and on all of them is a return PO box number.

Speaker 38 The location of that PO box is on the outskirts of the Riverland region of South Australia.

Speaker 3 When Alex gets this key piece of info, he disappears into his computer.

Speaker 13 The next time we speak, he's got news.

Speaker 25 I've been doing a bit of digging and doing a few

Speaker 11 online searches,

Speaker 49 and

Speaker 25 I've managed to find his actual address

Speaker 51 so um

Speaker 22 a lot of the o box yeah his home his actual address

Speaker 22 yeah

Speaker 25 yeah

Speaker 59 it really is

Speaker 22 very remote it's a bush block it's a bush block yeah that's the address okay put that into

Speaker 25 maps he really is in the middle of nowhere

Speaker 24 900 hectares of bush

Speaker 13 now we know where he lives It's nearly time for us to meet.

Speaker 25 Where we decide to meet is another question, but I don't feel super comfortable about doing it at that remote property. Definitely not.

Speaker 25 Definitely not.

Speaker 27 On his flight AAA to Adelaide to board now through gate number 17C.

Speaker 24 For all other customers, general boarding will commence shortly.

Speaker 52 So just before

Speaker 52 we left the airport, I wrote an email to Jack. Hopefully he'll reply to us by the time we land and maybe we'll get our chance to finally talk to him.

Speaker 73 And thank you, Cavacu. Final door has now been closed.
Everyone make sure your phones are in place or airplane mode.

Speaker 35 When we get to Adelaide, we grab a hired car and start the three hours drive towards Jack's place.

Speaker 15 And I'm feeling this weird mixture of sort of dread, but also anticipation and intense interest in what we're about to find out.

Speaker 18 I'm just thinking about

Speaker 40 when did you contact me again?

Speaker 29 Yeah, maybe like yeah it would have been about October I think last year.

Speaker 75 Yeah.

Speaker 75 October last year so

Speaker 34 I just quit my job

Speaker 19 then I get a call from you

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 75 before you know it,

Speaker 75 I'm on the road here

Speaker 41 looking for the guy who firebombed my family's restaurant

Speaker 75 who

Speaker 75 is somewhere out there who apparently has retired

Speaker 75 but possibly could be coaching some of the next generation of Nazis.

Speaker 75 I think we'll be okay, but it is something that's crossed my mind.

Speaker 37 Has it crossed your mind?

Speaker 54 Yeah,

Speaker 54 for sure. I'm

Speaker 3 to be honest, I'm like

Speaker 29 most concerned about you. Like,

Speaker 29 this has been my job for a long time, and it's not an entirely new experience for me, but whilst this is something in an abstract form, you've been thinking about and dealing with for a long time, now we're driving around a remote part of South Australia, about to potentially meet up with this guy.

Speaker 31 And like,

Speaker 42 yeah, I just want to make sure that

Speaker 29 you're okay and that you're feeling

Speaker 29 comfortable with where we are and what we're about to do.

Speaker 75 Yeah, sometimes I do wonder whether I've maybe bit enough more than I can chew.

Speaker 75 There's been a few nights where I've just gone,

Speaker 75 Are you really ready to go on this journey?

Speaker 29 What do you actually expect from talking to Jack about all these things?

Speaker 75 He's most likely just gonna look at me and say, I don't give a fuck.

Speaker 75 And I'm prepared for that.

Speaker 72 We drive through flat farming country for a couple of hours, you know, passing through the occasional blinking, you'll miss it kind of town.

Speaker 29 There's a sign back there that says peak population 60.

Speaker 3 Then, as the sat-nav tells us we're getting closer, the landscape starts to change.

Speaker 47 There's not even any fences, it's just scrub.

Speaker 44 We slow the car down.

Speaker 47 We're getting close, actually.

Speaker 29 That's the track, okay. Okay, I know where we are.

Speaker 29 That's running up the fence line. There'll be an entry just up here, I should think.

Speaker 7 We know we're in the right place, but you can't even see a house, it's just bush. But then we see something:

Speaker 20 there's a sign out the front: Hobbit's Haunt.

Speaker 22 What the f

Speaker 23 it's like a two-plank wood sign with Hobbit's Haunt on it in the front of all of the rings.

Speaker 11 I'm not sure what exactly I expected to find out the front of Jack's place,

Speaker 47 but this

Speaker 41 is not it.

Speaker 38 The sign is pretty big and sort of official looking.

Speaker 37 It's not hand-painted or scrolled, it's like carved in a proper Celtic-looking font, like the type you'd see on the frontage of an Irish pub.

Speaker 59 God, it's weird that it's called Hobbits Haunt.

Speaker 57 I'm really curious to know why he's chosen Hobbits Haunt.

Speaker 33 Hobbits Haunt? What's J.R.

Speaker 52 Tolkien?

Speaker 33 Hobbits Haunt.

Speaker 35 While we're stewing that over, Alex starts taking a look around.

Speaker 13 Anything you notice about the track?

Speaker 31 Uh

Speaker 49 look, it does look like I mean the cars are kind of coming in and out of here.

Speaker 62 There are

Speaker 53 tracks from cars coming in and out, but it doesn't look like it's been, you know, nothing today, I don't think.

Speaker 13 Alex and I stare up the sandy driveway.

Speaker 17 It's a narrow track that runs up a slight hill before disappearing into these thick trees.

Speaker 4 In our email, we let Jack know that we were coming to see him, but he still hasn't replied.

Speaker 13 So, does he have any idea that we're standing outside his place, like right now?

Speaker 51 In theory, you could walk straight in, but for us, that's

Speaker 51 I mean, we're not allowed to.

Speaker 51 It'd be trespassing to go any further.

Speaker 51 And,

Speaker 53 you know, as much as Jack is like an old guy these days,

Speaker 51 there still has to be an element of caution with how we approach this.

Speaker 49 If it wasn't for this comment that he's out here training the next generation, I think maybe I would

Speaker 59 feel less trepidatious.

Speaker 13 Our phones don't work out here, so we head back into a nearby town for phone reception and to come up with another way of getting to Jack.

Speaker 45 And while we're there, we check out this Hobbits haunt thing.

Speaker 43 And it turns out in Europe, there's this weird association between the Lord of the Rings books and certain far-right ideas of so-called traditional values.

Speaker 13 So maybe there's something to it.

Speaker 11 Or then again, maybe Jack just really likes the books.

Speaker 74 Whatever the case, we need to get a clearer picture of what he's up to behind all those trees.

Speaker 55 So we get out the car and we start exploring the local town.

Speaker 67 Okay, look, I think there's basically there's a few places around here in Loxton that we should visit just to sort of see who knows him through his artwork.

Speaker 58 Because reportedly Jack is a bit of an artist these days.

Speaker 49 Back in 2012 and 2015 Jack actually exhibited a little bit around Loxton.

Speaker 53 It's going back a bit but it's probably worth a visit to these places and see if anyone remembers him or can show us a picture of the artwork.

Speaker 14 In our combing through archives we found out that his work had been exhibited at Loxton Visitor Centre which doubles as the town's library.

Speaker 13 We find Karen Rubarth, the manager inside.

Speaker 76 So this would have been exhibited in the gallery.

Speaker 7 Karen doesn't seem seem to know much about Jack, but she agrees to search a digital records for his name.

Speaker 76 I don't remember the exhibition being in the library, but that's not to say that it wasn't. But I do remember that name for some reason.

Speaker 35 Karen opens a folder on her computer filled with colourful thumbnails of artwork, and

Speaker 42 there they are.

Speaker 67 Can you describe what

Speaker 19 we're looking at here?

Speaker 76 They look like landscapes mainly.

Speaker 42 There's no people in them.

Speaker 41 It's all trees, sand, water, mountains.

Speaker 20 They're kind of peaceful.

Speaker 54 This one, I'm not sure.

Speaker 76 Could even be a sea landscape. Definitely a river landscape.

Speaker 54 And that one almost could be Lake Bonnie.

Speaker 54 They're pretty good.

Speaker 76 You think so? Yeah.

Speaker 54 They're certainly not... They're not rubbish.
No, I like them.

Speaker 6 Other than the fact that she has photos of of his work, Karen doesn't seem to know anyone who knows Jack or any way of finding out more information about what he's up to.

Speaker 76 I hope you have some success with what you're trying to find, yeah.

Speaker 54 Thank you.

Speaker 39 Next, we get back in a car and drive to another nearby town.

Speaker 57 This one's even closer to Jack's place.

Speaker 59 Yeah, there's somebody over here. I'm about to have a chat to this old fella.

Speaker 55 We get out of the car and start knocking on doors.

Speaker 21 I'm just just going to get my nose. Fuck.

Speaker 3 When Alex starts talking to shop owners, the vibe here is totally different.

Speaker 23 It seems like no one really wants to have a microphone stuck in their face around these parts.

Speaker 6 So Alex just turns it back on each time we head back out onto the street.

Speaker 21 So again, we've just jumped into like an ag suppliers shop and

Speaker 21 had a quick chat to the guy behind the counter and now we asked him about the property and he says, oh, nobody goes in there.

Speaker 21 no one knows anything about the guy who lives there he's an ex-vet I think very interesting

Speaker 13 Jack is a Vietnam vet so it seems like people here actually know of him the next stop is another farm supply store

Speaker 21 okay so that was super interesting we've just come out of an ag supplies place

Speaker 21 okay so the first thing that stuck at me was that people used to ride their motorbikes through this block up until a couple of years ago when somebody new moved in and now they're like

Speaker 65 word in town is basically that it's not kind of safe to do that anymore that they're so they what did they say there might even be booby traps out there but do you see the the way they looked at each other yeah that minute you start even describing when you said hobbits haunt and you decide to describe this the block they were looking at each other eyes darting back and forth to the other guy that was in there.

Speaker 28 I like his body language.

Speaker 21 I mean, yeah, I get the sense that they know a little bit more than they told us.

Speaker 65 She said people don't come out here when they buy land like that and don't come out here for farming, they come out here to hide something.

Speaker 21 They did give us the name of somebody

Speaker 21 who, along with their kids, used to ride motorbikes through the property.

Speaker 17 We stop at one final shop, and bit by bit, a clearer picture of Jack's life here starts to emerge.

Speaker 21 So we've just been into another shop.

Speaker 21 The guys asked us not to say which shop it is but

Speaker 21 we got some pretty interesting pretty interesting stories that

Speaker 21 he's actually spoken to Jack and confirmed that it is Jack's property.

Speaker 21 It's also the second time somebody's confirmed that he's building a roundhouse on the property so we know he's like building some kind of property. I mean I don't know what a roundhouse is.

Speaker 21 What are we talking like a

Speaker 21 you know like a gazebo or is he talking are we talking about a house? Like, it's not clear to me what's going on.

Speaker 65 It's not doing an Airbnb, that's for sure.

Speaker 23 If Jack doesn't already know we're in town, he will soon.

Speaker 21 Everybody's going to know. If anyone that we've spoken to has any kind of relationship with Jack, we're just going to get back to him likely today.

Speaker 38 Definitely.

Speaker 40 After door knocking almost every business in town, we've got a clear idea now that locals love to gossip and a patchy idea of what Jack's up to.

Speaker 3 It seems like he moved to his Hobbits Haunt bush block about three years ago, but no one really knows what he's doing there beyond building that roundhouse thing.

Speaker 13 All we've found out is that he's growing his own food and harvesting rainwater to provide for a mob of local emus and kangaroos.

Speaker 35 Now, I want to believe that's all he's doing.

Speaker 71 That and painting, but I'm just not convinced.

Speaker 8 So we head back towards his house because we're told that some of those kids who were warned away from his property work on a farm near there.

Speaker 40 And before we know it, we're driving along this soft sandy track.

Speaker 28 Okay, keep up, you've invented three here.

Speaker 30 Don't get bogged.

Speaker 21 No, keep going, keep going, keep going, don't slow down.

Speaker 30 That's right, yeah, no, no.

Speaker 30 Yeah.

Speaker 28 Okay, so we're just like driving along a dirt track into the middle of a farm.

Speaker 28 We're a little way away from Jack's place now.

Speaker 21 We're being taken

Speaker 28 to somebody who's working on this farm who apparently knows a bit about Jack and has met him and

Speaker 28 actually knows what's going on on the property.

Speaker 21 And we're gonna have a chat to them, hopefully.

Speaker 28 It's been a pretty funny afternoon of

Speaker 28 conversations with people. You know, each person is leading us to another person, who's leading us to another person, and now we're in this weird situation where we're

Speaker 28 following somebody in a

Speaker 28 four-wheel drive out through the middle of a

Speaker 28 farm.

Speaker 28 Oh, here we go.

Speaker 31 Okay, here, there's a harvester sum.

Speaker 28 Can you see it?

Speaker 71 We stop the car get out and chat to a group of workers.

Speaker 39 They're sitting on the back of this large harvesting machine and like everyone around here they don't want to be recorded so we switch off the mic.

Speaker 6 When we turn it back on we've got heaps to unpack.

Speaker 21 Oh my god, there's so many things out of that conversation. Basically there's like he's apparently been living in a bus on the property while he

Speaker 21 has been building this kind of roundhouse out of recycled materials and that's the thing that he's talking about with the Hobbits haunt. It's like as if it's some sort of Hobbits house.

Speaker 7 It sounds like he's gone and down this

Speaker 34 sustainability eco hobby project.

Speaker 42 One girl there says she's actually been helping Jack out on his property.

Speaker 17 She also said Jack loves to talk, like he'll really chew your ear off.

Speaker 47 But what took me totally by surprise is how she said that to her, Jack seemed like a nice guy.

Speaker 34 The picture the locals have painted of Jack today isn't one of a neo-Nazi training the next generation, but of an old hermit who sits at home growing vegetables.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 37 I think I'm starting to believe that's really all he's doing.

Speaker 30 If he has changed.

Speaker 30 If he is trying to change his life. And

Speaker 30 I guess that's the thing we want to put this on record for him, don't we? To say that, look, this man has changed and everyone should leave him alone.

Speaker 30 Because I, you know, I...

Speaker 30 It was interesting. For a moment there, I saw...

Speaker 30 And...

Speaker 30 In that conversation with that girl, for a moment there, for temporarily, right now, I see a life of Jack

Speaker 30 having this

Speaker 30 productive relationship with these younger people in building an eco-sustainable project.

Speaker 30 And that was actually a nice moment just then, hearing the way she talked about him

Speaker 30 in that way. Not about

Speaker 30 all the other terrible things he's done.

Speaker 30 But it's nice, right, for that moment, for me, some ways to hear her talk about Jack in this way as if he was just this fuddy-duddy.

Speaker 30 She called him a pretty cool dude. That's what she said.

Speaker 30 Yes.

Speaker 30 Wouldn't it be great if Jack was just a pretty cool dude now?

Speaker 30 You know, Uncle Jack, he did some shitty shit in the past.

Speaker 30 But now

Speaker 30 he's reading his JR token and he's going to build a mound.

Speaker 13 And he's doing it sustainably.

Speaker 30 Like how cool is that?

Speaker 19 And he owns emus!

Speaker 30 That's the jack I want to know.

Speaker 30 That's the jack I want to meet.

Speaker 39 So the picture we have of Jack has changed.

Speaker 7 Alex reaches out to some contacts and we find out that local police are aware Jack lives out here and they know about his past but they don't think Jack's up to anything concerning at all.

Speaker 12 But we still want to talk to Jack so we want to try one last thing.

Speaker 55 We have this phone number that we found in our searches.

Speaker 39 We didn't want to try it until we were nearby and ready to meet up with him and until we had a better idea of what he was up to.

Speaker 34 We never tried the number and we're not even sure if it really is his.

Speaker 31 You ready?

Speaker 64 Yeah, I am.

Speaker 33 I can video call him.

Speaker 31 That's not a good idea.

Speaker 33 Okay, here we go.

Speaker 33 Swinging.

Speaker 77 Hi, this is Jack Stoning. Please leave a message, your name and number, and he'll get back to you as soon as he can, if he wants to.

Speaker 23 That's not the voice I expected to hear, and I have no idea who it is.

Speaker 13 The whole thing catches me off guard, and I stumble through trying to leave a message.

Speaker 7 Hi, Jack. It's Christian Chan here.
Don't know if you've received our email or our text message last night, but we're here in Loxton right now, and

Speaker 52 we're going to be be here for um for most of the day you can call me back on this number anytime and i would love to hear from you thanks bye

Speaker 54 oh i'm shaking a little bit

Speaker 54 wow okay

Speaker 47 it is jack's phone obviously because

Speaker 52 that's what the message said um

Speaker 10 yeah but look i'm really i really hope she

Speaker 47 tries to call me back

Speaker 45 The next day, we call Jack again, but he doesn't call us back.

Speaker 7 We're sitting in our car on the main street, wondering what to do next, when we get a call from a pretty heavy-sounding guy who knows my name.

Speaker 37 Yeah, it's Crispian.

Speaker 19 How you doing?

Speaker 4 It's a mate of Jack's.

Speaker 58 He's polite, but his message is pretty clear.

Speaker 54 Back off.

Speaker 13 When he hangs up, we suddenly realize that we've been so tense listening to him that we've been cooking ourselves in an airless car

Speaker 59 fresh air let's just open the door

Speaker 29 i wasn't expecting that

Speaker 53 i wasn't expecting that either

Speaker 46 wasn't expecting that at all

Speaker 4 It's probably time to get out of here, but before we head off, Alex makes one last call to one of Jack's veteran mates who we know also lives nearby.

Speaker 54 Did you hear that?

Speaker 47 Could you hear what he was saying?

Speaker 54 So

Speaker 3 he's talked to Jack today.

Speaker 54 Yeah, he spoke to him this morning.

Speaker 54 Jack called him this morning.

Speaker 47 And what did Jack say to him?

Speaker 54 He told him that we'd been in touch with him and

Speaker 37 he told this person we just spoke to on the phone that he's not going to talk to us, that he doesn't want anything to do with us.

Speaker 52 Does that mean he did see the phone ring when we called him and it wasn't as if he missed it? He chose not to pick up that phone.

Speaker 26 He listened to the voice messages and decided not to pick up or require the call.

Speaker 19 You know,

Speaker 52 I'm in two minds. You know, I'm kind of like,

Speaker 47 yeah, I would have liked to have that conversation.

Speaker 54 But

Speaker 52 But the other part is, yeah, okay.

Speaker 52 Enough is enough.

Speaker 47 If what that girl yesterday has said about describing you as the person as being,

Speaker 52 then I'm okay with that.

Speaker 17 So it seems like Jack is done, finally.

Speaker 34 Nothing I've seen has convinced me his views have changed, but there seems to be no evidence that he's got half a dozen blokes living with him or that he's he's training the next generation.

Speaker 7 But I'm glad I came here with Alex.

Speaker 34 It felt like we had a responsibility to investigate these rumors that he was still active.

Speaker 5 And I'm glad we haven't found anything like that out here.

Speaker 55 But I have one other thing that I need to look into.

Speaker 18 Because while it seems like Jack has moved on, Today's right-wing extremists, they haven't forgotten about Jack.

Speaker 2 We can see someone like Jack Van Tongren becomes an inspiration years later.

Speaker 78 Authorities are increasingly dealing with an undercurrent of right-wing radicals.

Speaker 37 I'm worried that all of this could happen again.

Speaker 2 Neo-Nazis marched in formation, performing the Hitler salute.

Speaker 41 Fertile recruiting ground for extremists.

Speaker 78 I think people need to know that it hasn't gone away, really.

Speaker 78 It's all back on the rise again.

Speaker 12 This series is hosted and reported by me, Crispian Chan and Alex Mann.

Speaker 7 We've been making this podcast on Gadaguland and Watjaknunga Land. Our producer and researcher is Dunya Karagic.

Speaker 55 Research and fact checking by Johnny Liu.

Speaker 41 Our theme and music composition is by Martin Perolter.

Speaker 40 Sound design and additional music by Simon Branthwaite.

Speaker 12 The commissioning editor was Alice Brennan and our executive producer is Tim Roxburgh.

Speaker 34 To make sure you're the first to get the next episodes, follow the Unravel podcast.

Speaker 55 You can find it on the ABC Listen app.

Speaker 7 If you're enjoying Firebomb and you like storytelling podcasts for the sort of twists and turns you've heard here, have a listen to the new season of Days Like These made by our colleagues at the ABC.

Speaker 41 There are chance encounters, uncovered secrets, half-truths, and straight-out lies.

Speaker 13 You'll laugh out loud, and sometimes you'll cry.

Speaker 7 Days like these bring you stories about ordinary Australians and the day where everything changed.

Speaker 3 Just search for the Days Like These podcast.

Speaker 7 Find it on the ABC Listen app.