Police said a husband and wife were fatally shot along with their son at their ranch.
Mervyn and Maree Schwarz and her son Graham Tighe were killed on a remote farmland in the Australian outback and the alleged gunman was later arrested.
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Police said Graham’s brother Ross survived being shot and fled “many, many kilometers” to sound the alarm.
He was taken to hospital and in intensive care in a serious but stable condition.
Acting Queensland Police Superintendent Tom Armitt said three out of five police aides remained in custody, local media reported.
Armitt said the parties involved in the shooting are believed to be neighbours.
“The nominee is the alleged gunman who is with us here in custody,” he said.
Police launched a manhunt to find the shooter, who stayed for several hours.
The killings were linked to a property dispute, Courier-Mail reported, although police did not confirm any motive.
Officers were called to the property in the small remote mining town of Bogie, north Queensland, which has a population of 207, just before 9am on Thursday.
Neighbors say the property belonged to a young family last year but there is a dispute with neighboring property owners over the boundary line.
The family just bought the 300 square kilometer plot of land for £5.7 million in May 2021, zoned for grazing, livestock and farming purposes, Daily Mail Australia reports.
Mr Armitt said the shooting took place in a large cattle area in “rural, remote, hilly and densely forested areas”.
Queensland Police say “investigation is still ongoing into the circumstances leading up to the shooting”.
A local woman told Daily Mail Australia she had seen several police cars driving towards the scene of the shooting.
“I saw at least three police cars while I was outside and heard a few more sirens later,” she said.
“It’s not what you usually see. I thought straight that something bad had happened.”
Australia has some of the harshest gun laws in the world, introduced after a lone gunman killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania in 1996.
Since then, there have only been three mass shootings – identified in Australia as those that resulted in at least four deaths, not including the perpetrator.
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