Authorities are calling the incident a “religious terror attack,” citing the Trains’ Christian fundamentalist beliefs, a strain known as premillenarianism, whose adherents prepare for and anticipate the End of Days. A police investigation concluded the family had “acted as an autonomous cell” to carry out the attack, Queensland Police Deputy Commissioner Tracy Linford told reporters on Thursday. 

“Christian extremist ideology has been linked to other attacks around the world but this is the first time we’ve seen it in Australia,” the deputy commissioner said, acknowledging that there was no evidence the family had identified themselves as “sovereign citizens.” Stacey Train’s diary reportedly described police as “monsters and demons.”

Police were potentially “lured” to the Trains’ farm in search of Nathaniel, a high-school principal who had been reported missing by his estranged wife in New South Wales and was wanted on firearms charges.

Much has been made of Gareth Train’s postings on online forums, where he described Covid-19 as a “neurological bio-weapon” and the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, which led to sharply restricted gun ownership for civilians, as an operation to “disarm the Australian population.”