Allan Geoffrey O'Connor, 61, handed himself in to police at Nyngan about noon on Sunday, and was later charged with the murders of Jacob Cumberland, 28, and a 36-year-old woman, whose name has not been released.

Jacob, a local farmhand, who lived on the property with his father Stephen Cumberland in separate caravans, was discovered fatally shot in the driveway by a member of the public on Friday morning. A short time later, police found the woman's body out the front of Stephen Cumberland's fire-ravaged caravan where inside, he too, was dead.

On Monday, Acting Superintendent Andrew Hurst told the media he couldn't "speculate on motive but I can say that investigators believe the 61-year-old-man and the 36-year-old-woman were previously involved in a domestic relationship."

The statement confirmed what some in the small town, just 130 people in total, had already begun to suspect. Local farmhand Jacob Cumberland had been caught in the literal crossfire of a jealous rage between his father, O'Connor and O'Connor's former lover, which had escalated the prior evening during an argument at the pub.

"You could never ask and meet a more gentle, harmless person," Craig Grimmond said of the 28-year-old on Monday. Mr Grimmond, 52, who owns the neighbouring property to the Cumberland's, said he'd known Jacob for 15 years and had employed him as his leading farmhand for the last eight years.

During that time "he became part of us," he said, adding that his family had come to consider him a son and brother. He ate lunch at the farmhouse every day, often popped by for dinner and used their shower every day as his caravan site had no running water or power.

"We were his family. He was a bloody unbelievably lovely person. I'm a tough bloke but this has rocked me."

Jacob, along with his father, were known to police and had been in Nyngan Local court as recently as Wednesday for firearm and drug possession. But Mr Grimmond insists the 28-year-old was a "victim of his father's sex-rock-and-roll lifestyle."

He said he had tried to convince Jacob to leave his father's property permanently many times.

"I should have pushed harder. He'd still be alive today," he said.

Another friend, Vic Nalbandian, described him as a "rough cut diamond" and "top bloke." For the last eight years, Jacob has joined Mr Nalbandian's family, along with four of five other families for an annual Easter camping trip on Mr Grimmond's property.

"He was very gentle. He loved the kids. He didn't have a bad bone in his body."

Even during their regular "boys trips", where a group of friends would camp in a shearing shed on the Hermidale property, Jacob rarely drank, preferring to go motorbike riding during the day and enjoy the company of his friend's around the campfire by night.

"He was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Mr Nalbandian said.

O'Connor did not apply for bail at Dubbo Local Court on Monday and it was formally refused by magistrate Philip Stewart.