A would-be Labor senator who left Australia in January to join the fight against Islamic State has made contact with his family.
Confirmation that Matthew Gardiner has joined the Kurdish resistance to IS came after news that 28-year-old Australian Ashley Kent Johnston had been killed fighting for the Kurds in northern Syria.
Fairfax Media understands Mr Gardiner, who was the president of the Labor Party in the Northern Territory when he left the country leaving behind a wife and three young children, contacted his wife to assure her he was not the dead Australian in reports by Syrian monitors on Thursday.
He has texted his family from a series of different numbers.
It has been reported by the ABC that Mr Gardiner, 43, a former Army medic, is believed to be in the Al-Hasakah province close to the Syria–Iraq border, providing medical assistance to frontline fighters.
If so, he is in the same area where Mr Johnston died.
There is evidence that both men were in contact with a woman known as Kader Kandandir, a recruiter for the Kurdish People's Protection Units, known as the YPG.
She runs the "Lions of Rojava" Facebook page which exalts in the heroism of Kurdish fighters, including the foreign fighters who have joined their cause.
She has hit out at the federal government for making it a criminal offence to support the YPG, which it deems to be a terrorist organisation. If Mr Gardiner returns to Australia he faces up to 20 years in jail if convicted.
The Australian Federal Police has confirmed it is investigating Mr Gardiner who is a former high-ranking official at the union United Voice.
Fairfax Media has learned that he had the numbers behind him to claim the senate seat of former NT Labor senator Trish Crossin but was forced to stand aside for Julia Gillard's "captain's pick", Nova Peris.
Meanwhile, Mr Johnston's mother Amanda has contacted representatives of the Kurdish community in Australia.
Australian Kurdish Association president Gulfer Olan will travel to Canberra to meet her to express the community's sympathy.
Mr Johnston, a former Army Reservist born in Maryborough, Queensland, but was more recently from Canberra, has been lauded as a "martyr" to the Kurdish cause on social media.
He was known as "Heval Bagok" to his comrades.
On Friday, the YPG posted pictures of more than a dozen dead bodies of what it called "ISIS terrorists pigs", apparently killed in retribution for Mr Johnston's death.
"We took revenge for Heval Bagok, for his family, Australia and the world," the YPG said.
