If he is helping me find a house at $240,000, giving me his trusted contact for hard money (said he will probably give me 10% with 2pts) for the time I rehab it. 

Get together with your attorney and CPA, but I would highly consider purchasing properties in a LLC or Trust. 

He did not trust to leave the other guys working without him on the part of the project they are doing right now because they have not done this before and he wants to make sure its done right the first time. 

Do not assume anything will be done by somebody until they acquire trust. 

If you purchase via an IRA (as opposed to a 401k), you will need to open an IRA account at a specialty trust company which allows for investments in real estate.

How could they trust you if you haven't done it before? 

In Milwaukee we have a trusted Facebook group that's monitored heavily so that we can weed out the bad contractors, realtors and other pro's in the field.

I love to hear about things like that and am sure I could learn a lot from you.In answer to your question, we got the private money loan from a relative who was kind enough to trust and invest with us.

Also i doubt there would not be too much difference between the States and Aus.Actually Keiran there is a world of difference between AU real estate and US real estate, be very careful investing in the US using AU strategies, it simply won't work (trust me, i tried it for 2 years...)And you would not be able to use an Australian first home buyers grant to buy a US property. 

Once you find someone you trust with teams, systems and processes in place I would want to start with a partial investment in a deal as a test run.