A Japanese doomsday cult bought a million-acre Australian sheep ranch to test sarin gas

In April 1993, Aum Shinrikyo — the cult that would gas the Tokyo subway two years later — purchased Banjawarn Station, a remote sheep ranch covering 404,680 hectares (about a million acres) in Western Australia, 500 miles northeast of Perth. They used a front company headed by Yasuko Shimada, an Australian citizen of Japanese descent.

In September, cult members arrived with chemicals and mining equipment, paying over $20,000 in excess baggage fees. Australian customs found mislabeled hydrochloric acid in containers marked as hand soap, along with perchloric acid and aqueous ammonia.

The group's leader, Shoko Asahara, came personally with "five females under the age of fifteen who were traveling without their parents." The chairwoman of a nearby Aboriginal community said she saw about five people in "full-length suits and helmets" standing beside a twin-engine airplane on the property.

When Australian police raided the site after the 1995 Tokyo subway attack, they found "sheep carcasses that showed signs of exposure to sarin" and soil traces of "methylphosphonic acid, a residue of sarin use." The cult had also been mining uranium on the property.

A mysterious seismic event detected nearby in May 1993 — 170 times more powerful than the largest mining explosion known in Australia — remains unexplained.

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