A survivalist with doomsday fantasies caught with more than a dozen guns including automatic machine guns was fuelled by his failed military career.
Aleziah Tolkein Spiers, 30, was discharged from the Australian Army after serving two years as a rifleman before turning to a survivalist lifestyle on his then-father-in-law's property at Clarkefield, in central Victoria.
While preparing for an apocalyptic or worldwide catastrophic event Spiers built a community of survivalist friends and ran regular workshops teaching activities and skills he learned from the internet.
Through that network he met a 62-year-old man with motor neurone disease, who began bringing him tools, farm equipment and motorbikes for the property.
He also brought firearms, which Spiers stored in a shipping container and under floorboards in a shearing shed.
Among 16 firearms found during police raids in July were three machine guns, multiple semi-automatic rifles, including one that had been shortened, and several single barrel bolt action rifles.
A semi-automatic handgun was also found in Spiers' bedroom, prosecutor Zoran Petric told the Victorian County Court on Wednesday.
Police searches of the property had to be suspended overnight for safety reasons, but also uncovered knives and chemicals that could be combined to make explosives.
Spiers pleaded guilty to firearms charges, also confessing he possessed daggers, a slingshot with ball bearings, a handheld crossbow, a sword, a nunchaku and an extendable baton.
He admitted storing, cleaning and even restoring some of the weapons. There was no allegation he had fired the guns.
When interviewed by police, Spiers said he believed the farm would be a good place to "bug out in the event of an apocalypse-type scenario" and while he never fired the guns he believed he would know how to if he sat down with one because he had cleaned several of them.
His barrister Timothy Fitzpatrick said while someone could look at Spiers with the number of weapons he had and draw a negative impression, scratching beneath the surface would reveal a man who was willing to help others.
In 2015 he was awarded a bravery medal for swimming 250 metres at Frankston Beach to help rescue a woman, spending an hour in the water with another man to keep her afloat before more help arrived.
He acknowledged Spiers' survivalist lifestyle wasn't for everybody, but it was a choice for many people.
Judge Michael Tinney raised concerns that Spiers was a man conducting survivalist training with a stockpile of weapons and ammunition, while also having received military training and harbouring desires to be in the special forces, Australian Federal Police and counter terrorism.
"He's not in any of those - he's a person who, undoubtedly on the materials, has had some level of fantasy about apocalyptic scenarios and doomsday," he said.
He said experts noted that he made decisions based on his failed attempts at a military and law enforcement career, and a lack of trajectory toward the life he desired.
His survivalist lifestyle and other endeavours, underpinned by the immature fantasies of his prowess, appeared in part motivated by a dysfunctional need to boost his self-esteem, by placing him in a position as a leader admired by others, they said.
Spiers will be sentenced at a later date.
