As the effects of the coronavirus unravelled around the world, so did Gareth Train’s mind.

By early 2020, the deadly virus had made its way to Australia, and by March had been declared a worldwide pandemic. As the death toll climbed into the millions, governments responded with extreme measures to save their citizens.

Lockdowns were enforced. Vaccinations hastily created and then mandated.

This was the moment for Gareth. All his plans were paying off. He and Stacey were away from it all, hidden on their isolated bush block, far from the controlling government and its “bad state actors”.

He knew these government-enforced “deadly vaccines” would bring the mass destruction they’d been talking about, and then Christ would return to the Earth. He and Stacey would soon reach salvation.

They hoped Nathaniel would understand this too. And they wanted more people to join them.

Gareth wanted to lead a movement. He wanted to be a leader.

He began contacting other, like minded people. He’d done his research and wanted to share it with other “leaders”.

He tried writing to Australia One party founder Riccardo Bosi, after the party shared its stance against Covid vaccines. But Bosi was not interested in what Gareth had to say.

He also an Australian “common law movement” expert described by some as a sovereign citizen.

Gareth told him he was being persecuted by learjets and that chemtrails were being sprayed on him and others in the area. The expert replied but whatever he wrote did not excite Gareth.

By November, Gareth was sharing his views on the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.

“Martin was the perfect patsy. The Australian government is guilty of mass murder, it’s not the first time and won’t be the last. Joint operation CIA, MI6, Mossad, ASIO and the Australian SASR,” he wrote online.

Gareth’s paranoia increased as the government increased its pressure around vaccines. He started believing his electronic communications were being monitored, that the world was corrupt and governments were taking advantage of the masses.

Then the persecution became more personal. He, Gareth, was being targeted. He started to believe planes flying over his property were conducting surveillance on him. Others were dropping medication, like crop dusters dumping pesticides, including the Covid vaccination.

He started to tell his brother about his fears. Over time, he started to impress upon Nathaniel the impending doom of the world.

They needed to speak in person though. He needed Nathaniel to come to Wieambilla. It was likely all their communications were being monitored.

On January 6, 2021, Nathaniel made the trip, telling people close to him he was going to visit his children.

They’d call it “church” - a church assembly of three where Gareth would unveil his grand opus.

He would preach of his beliefs about the worsening situation of the world; about how ASIO was monitoring him; how biochemical neurological weapons were being dropped by planes through “chemtrails”; how people were being abducted and turned into non-humans; that humans wore meat suits; and how police and authority figures were “agents of evil”.

Stacey would spend hours calculating the exact date of the second coming of Christ, the point when Jesus would physically return to earth and rule for 1000 years. She went over and over the details, checking and rechecking, eventually landing on a date on or close to April 23, 2023. It was then that they would reach religious salvation.

It was all coming together. But they needed to plan ahead, to recruit. Gareth kept contacting like-minded people online. And sometime around May, 2021, he finally met his match - someone who understood him and thought the same way.

He lived on a ranch in Arizona in the United States, also on a property away from the world, away from the government. His name was Donald Day Junior.

WHEN IT ALL CHANGED FOR NATHANIEL

In August 2021, Nathaniel’s life was turned upside down.

He’d been living and working in the small NSW town of Walgett, where he was the principal of the Walgett Community College Primary School.

He found the job stressful and those who had run the school before him had not lasted long in the role.

And then one day, on August 10, he collapsed at school. An undiagnosed heart condition, cardiomyopathy, had caused him to go into cardiac arrest. Fellow staff rushed to help, calling triple-0. One of the first to the scene was Sergeant Andrew Thorpe, who dropped to his knees and performed CPR.

Nathaniel woke up in hospital with Covid restrictions still in place. Nobody could visit - but they could call. Gareth and Stacey did just that, with Gareth bizarrely recording the conversation.

From his hospital bed, Nathaniel told his brother and ex-wife about the strange dreams he’d been having, dreams where he was “fighting police”. They talked about shooting police if they tried to stop them driving through Covid checkpoints at state borders.

As Nathaniel recovered, doctors explained he only had 20 per cent cardiac function and that he would need a pacemaker-type device. They also spoke to him of the Covid vaccine. His heart was too weak to cope with the strain of such a dangerous virus.

He refused it all. And he would never return to the school.

A TRIO REUNITED

Nathaniel drew away from friends he’d made in town. He told people he planned to travel, to see his children and do some camping around Queensland before making his way back south to Walgett.

Back in Wieambilla, Stacey gave her notice at Tara Shire State College. It was December 16, 2021, and teachers were required by law to have the Covid vaccine.

The next day, Nathaniel crossed the border into Queensland, crashing through a border gate and bizarrely driving his new LandCruiser into floodwaters at Talwood, near Goondiwindi.

Bogged and stranded, Nathaniel got out, dumping some of his guns into the water.

A farmhand spotted him and drove over in a tractor, towing the flooded LandCruiser out and dropping Nathaniel into town.

Before they parted ways, Nathaniel borrowed the man’s phone to call his brother. With his car out of action, it was possible he called his brother for a lift.

He walked away with a backpack strapped to his shoulders, two firearms attached to the front. He was also carrying a compound bow and Rambo-style knives.

OVERTAKEN BY PARANOIA

Nathaniel didn’t move into his brother’s two-bedroom bush home. He was becoming paranoid. He thought the authorities were after him and thought it best to lay low, in case he brought trouble to Gareth and Stacey’s door.

But he stayed close, camping in the bush and living off the land.

By early 2022, Stacey was also becoming increasingly delusional.

“I don’t want to freak you out but I am not joking when I say Gareth and I are both being monitored by ASIO,” she texted a friend.

“For example our text messages and emails routinely disappear and later come back.”

She went on to mention there had been a Learjet flying “really low and repeatedly”.

“I know it sounds nuts but it’s true,” she wrote.

A month later she texted the same friend referencing the vaccination, corrupt criminal government, injecting children with experimental gene therapies, Antarctica falling into the ocean, bleaching of Great Barrier Reef and that World War 3 was “due any minute”.

She was having dreams of demons torturing her over a fire and wrote in her notebook of the “beast system” and her plans to fight “side-by-side with the lord on the battlefield”.

The trio tried to convince Aidan and Madelyn to join them, to believe what they believed, wanting to “save them from the end of times”. The children rejected their advances.

TRIO IN HIGH ALERT

Nathaniel might have been exhibiting paranoia - but he was also right in his beliefs that authorities were trying to find him.

The police had been alerted of his border breach and were looking for him.

Constable Michael Brownlee was tasked to handle the investigation and a local crew from Chinchilla - constables Randall Kirk and Nathan Rigg - drove out to the Wieambilla property to see if he was there. They were investigating him for the offences of wilful damage and not securing firearms and ammunition.

On August 5, 2022, they pulled up at 251 Wains Rd to find a locked gate. Nathan left a note, asking the Trains to get in touch.

What seemed like an innocuous visit may have been the trigger for the Trains. They were now in a state of high alert.

Over the coming weeks and months the trio went about fortifying their block.

Three sniper hides - disguised by bushes and sticks were built at points along the long dirt driveway. One of them had a small opening staring down the front gate.

They also made a steel and log barricade and placed it on the driveway about 100m from their home. Large mirrors were placed along the driveway near the house. Anyone driving it at night, with headlights, would be dazzled by the reflection.

Gareth also started filming himself shooting at planes, at least five times. He talked about how low the planes were flying over and how ASIO was spying on him.

They made a “faraday box” from aluminium foil to protect their mobile phones from anyone who might be intercepting their calls or messages.

The Trains also named their front gate the “Rubicon”, in a historical reference to Julius Caesar who had paused with his army at the banks of the Rubicon River in northern Italy. Before crossing the river he said words to the effect of the “die is cast”, referring to a point of no return.

THE EMAILS

Months would pass until a person who knew Nathaniel became concerned about his health.

He had stopped taking his heart medication and, while originally keeping in touch after crossing the Queensland border, had suddenly stopped communicating.

Nathaniel’s son was worried too. In October, Aidan wrote to his uncle, saying: “I genuinely think you are so far gone that if cops came to your house it would only result in death and harm. I don’t want to cause trouble, what I want is to know Nathaniel is well.”

NSW police were contacted in late November, 2022, by the person close to Nathaniel, and after some hesitation, a missing persons report was made.

The officer who resuscitated Nathaniel, Sgt Andrew Thorpe, made the report early the following month.

The missing persons investigation was soon upgraded to “high risk” because of the concerns for Nathaniel’s health. His untreated heart condition could prove fatal.

Checks were conducted on Nathaniel’s banking, health and phone records, taken up by other officers after Sgt Thorpe was seconded to a station in another part of NSW.

On December 10, Nathaniel’s son Aidan sent another email to Gareth, warning him a missing persons report had been made. It had not been his decision, Aidan wrote, and he hoped it would not cause them trouble.

Gareth was furious. He fired off a number of emails on December 11, some to his “missing” brother.

“My guess is that they will attempt to see you dead by saturnalia Satan’s festive holy day of the year,” Gareth wrote in one email to Nathaniel.

“Where they have failed with Stacey and I, they now come for you. Stay sharp.”

And in another, he wrote: “If trouble arrives on my doorstep, it will be dealt with forthwith as it always has.”

Stacey was busy making her views known too. In a comment she wrote around the same time on an online video, she said: “After dealing with covert agents and tactics for sometime now, Daniel (Gareth’s middle name) believes that should they choose to cross the rubicon with public state actors, our Father is giving us a clear sign. Monsters and their heads will soon be parted.”

The frightening emails to Nathaniel did not go unnoticed. The person close to him, who had access to his account, spotted them and took them to NSW police on the morning of December 12.

One of those recipients was Sgt Thorpe. Despite his new placement in another town, he uploaded them to the NSW police computer system at 10.47am and updated the investigation narrative.

Other officers involved in the case were also copied in. Some read the emails, some were on a day off and others were doing other work and did not read them.

That afternoon, NSW Police Detective Senior Constable Tim Montgomery picked up the phone and called Chinchilla police station.

They were hoping police in Queensland could visit a property in Wieambilla to ask after the whereabouts of a missing person - Nathaniel Train.

He copied and pasted the first narrative on the computer system and sent it to Senior Constable Stephanie Abbott at Chinchilla station.

It included information that the homeowner, Gareth Train, was paranoid and had a “dislike of police” and that he had not wanted his brother reported as a missing person.

It did not include a further narrative written by Sgt Thorpe that summarised the emails, or the emails themselves.

The first narrative had included so much detail the detective had not read any further.

Later that day, Senior Constable Abbott spoke with her superior Sgt Justin Drier and decided that because the property was at one of the blocks they’d send two crews - one from their station and one from Tara station.

Constables Randall Kirk, Keely Brough, Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold were tasked with the job at 3.31pm.

It was a routine inquiry. A missing person with an arrest warrant for outstanding offences. A Covid border breach. Unsecured weapons. Sgt Drier told the crews to jump the fence if it was locked. After all, Nathaniel was a “high risk” missing person who may need medical attention.

READ CHAPTER III: CROSSING THE RUBICON