A Rugby star who died alongside his three children in a horrific car fire posted a series of loving tributes to them in the weeks for the inferno.

Ex-National Rugby League player turned CrossFit coach Rowan Baxter died in the blaze along with his three children Laianah, Aaliyah and Trey.

The fire also left his wife Hannah Baxter, a fellow fitness coach at the couple’s Integr8 gym, critical with severe burns after the horror fire in Australia.

Hannah and Rowan were reportedly involved in a custody battle and police had been called to previous incidents of violence, reports The Courier Mail.

The dad had been flooding his social media feeds with tributes and loving posts in the weeks before the fatal fire.

One photo showed him trading his young baby with the caption, “Goodnight my babies. Dad loves you.”

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Another post read: “T-R-E-Y. Love you to the moon and back #daddy.”

It was accompanied with a picture of his smiling son, with the posts now being haunting to read following the tragedy.

Photos also show the fitness-focused family doing handstands at their gym.

And last month he posted a video of him messing around with the kids with the caption, “sweet dreams my babies. Love you to the moon”.

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Another video showed Rowan doing a handstand while the three children hit him with pool noodles in September.

He wrote: “Human piñatas. When mums away the kids will play and that’s including me.

“They smashed me for about an hour and the laughs were just uncontrollable.”

And another post from the same month includes the caption, “my wife does a brilliant job with the kiddies”.

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His social media pages however include hints to ongoing troubles before the tragic fire.

One friend wrote: “Chin up brother everything will work out just hang in there my bro a lot of people care about you and the situation your facing.”

And in May last year, Baxter shared a a Facebook image with statistics about male suicide.

He wrote: “84 men a week take their own life. 75 per cent of all suicides are male. 25 per cent of men live with a mental illness.

“Men are less likely to get help. Speak out, talking saves lives.”

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Witnesses reported seeing a woman jump from the burning car and yell “he’s poured petrol on me” during incident in Camp Hill yesterday at 8.30am.

Detective Inspector Mark Thompson said: “On arrival, police and emergency services have identified five people that were involved in the fire inside the vehicle.

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“I can confirm that we have three deceased children under the age of 10 in the vehicle.

“We have another deceased adult male who was known to the children, and we also have a victim suffering extensive injuries that are also known to the children and the adult male.”

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