Erin Patterson, who is accused of murdering three relatives by serving them a beef Wellington meal that contained death cap mushrooms, is giving evidence. Follow our live updates from the trial.
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4.23pm
From country vows to the open road: Simon and Erin Patterson’s post-wedding adventures
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A little later, in 2006, Patterson tells the jury she moved to a little hamlet not far from Korumburra.
There, she says, Don and Gail Patterson would invite her to a meal almost monthly. Simon was living in Melbourne at the time.
In June 2007, she and Simon got married at the Korumburra Anglican church. At the wedding, they invited Ian and Heather Wilkinson, and wanted them to relax as guests.
At the time, Erin said her parents were on a train for a holiday in Russia, so Dave Wilkinson, Simon’s cousin, walked her down the aisle.
Her new in-laws, Don and Gail, hired a huge marquee and put on a buffet for the wedding guests.
Patterson said that her new husband lived in a unit in Clayton or Oakleigh, owned by Don and Gail Patterson, so she moved in briefly after the wedding.
The couple had a brief honeymoon in Olinda, but what they really wanted to do was drive around Australia. She said they sold everything and “hit the open road”.
Patterson told the jury they started by visiting Sydney, where Simon had a few friends.
Later, the pair travelled to Perth. She said they also went to South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia before returning to Perth at the end of the year to settle there.
“Simon was pretty keen to keep travelling, and I was pretty keen to stop for a while and put down roots,” she said.
4.32pm
The ‘traumatic birth’ of Erin and Simon Patterson’s first child
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Shortly after the couple rented a home near the beach about 40 minutes south of Perth, Patterson applied to go to university and got pregnant.
Their first child was born in January 2009 in a very traumatic birth.
Crying, Patterson described to the jury the distressing birth of her son.
“It went for a very long time, and they tried to get him out with forceps, and he wouldn’t come out,” she recalls. “He started to go into distress, and they lost his heartbeat, so they performed an emergency cesarean.”
She said doctors were happy for the baby to be discharged to be with Simon, but wanted Patterson to stay in the hospital.
“I was really upset. I said ‘I don’t want to stay here by myself’,” she told courtroom 4.
“Simon said: ‘You can just do it, let’s just leave’.”
So Patterson did – she said she discharged herself against medical advice and went home to be with her husband and baby.
4.41pm
‘I felt really out of my depth’: Struggling after childbirth, Patterson recalls the comfort of a visit from her mother-in-law
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Erin Patterson, crying, told the jury about the birth of her first child and is now describing life in Perth afterwards.
Back then, the couple and their infant were living in a small unit in the inner city, so when Simon’s parents, Gail and Don Patterson, visited shortly after the birth, they stayed in an Airbnb.
“I remember being really relieved that Gail was there because I felt really out of my depth,” she said.
Gail Patterson helped her daughter-in-law settle the baby after a feed, and tried to interpret his cries with her. She was, Patterson recalls, supportive, gentle, and patient.
“She gave me good advice about just relaxing and enjoying it, you don’t have to stick to this timetable, this schedule, just relax and enjoy your baby,” she said.
After Don and Gail left, Erin said they continued living in the Perth flat.
“Simon was pretty keen for us to resume the trip where we left off before we stopped to have [the baby],” she said.
In April, the couple put their belongings in a storage unit and decided to continue travelling the northern part of Australia without any time constraints other than meeting relatives in Gibb River Road.
“One of Simon’s friends also joined us, and we took a couple of weeks for the Gibb River Road,” she said.
Gail Patterson
Gail sounds like a beautiful , kind, caring person........
