Court has wrapped up for the day.

Follow along tomorrow for more updates.

Patterson has been asked about her relationship with Don and Gail.

The court previously heard from Simon Patterson that his estranged wife sent an “extremely aggressive” message in the family group chat in late 2022 regarding mediations.

On a later day, as he resumed giving evidence, he said the message was actually sent in early 2023, described it as “inflammatory”, and said it had to do with discussions they were having around that time about their son.

Asked by Mandy if she recalled the event in issue, she said yes.

“I remember that he was upset with me about (our son) being very tired and suggested that it was due to my poor parenting. And I was hurt by that,” she said.

Patterson said as far as she was aware, she did not send that in the family group chat, but just to him as a reply to his message.

Asked if there were any messages during that period between her, Don and Gail that were marked by ‘upset or hurt’, Patterson said no.

She said the tone of her messages to Don and Gail were the same as they were in 2022.

Patterson was then shown messages between her, Don, and Gail in January 2022, which showed them having friendly discussions about her health, children, and other matters.

She said that tone largely remained the same throughout that year.

Patterson was then shown more messages between her, Don and Gail later that year, where they discussed tutoring, her son’s surgery, and other family matters.

Asked what her children’s relationship was like with their paternal grandparents, Patterson became emotional.

“They were very close. Especially (my son) and Don. They were like two minds separated by 50 years. (My son) just loved him,” she said, breaking down into tears.

Patterson is being shown photos of her electronic devices in her house at the time of the police search.

Asked by Mandy which phone she gave to police, she said she gave them the Samsung phone with the number ending in 835.

She said she gave them that number because she had started using that sim card because she had wanted to change her number so Simon would not be able to contact her.

Patterson said when she arrived home later that night (after police spent the day searching her home and she went to the station to be interviewed) she was “baffled” as there were two devices still left at her home - a Samsung and a Nokia.

“I remember being a bit confused because they had given me the seizure record and they said two phones taken, so I thought the Nokia had been left behind,” she said.

“I was trying to piece together what had gone on because there was (still) a Samsung (at my house).

Patterson said she found the Nokia was still there so she took the sim card ending in 783 and put it in the Nokia.

Patterson said she had a conversation with the child protection officer that she was going to change her phone.

She said she was concerned because of her tension in her relationship with Simon and that she wanted to change her phone so he could not contact her.

She said it was also her intention to change her phone number, and she had been in the process of transferring her contacts across.

“I had been setting up all of the applications on that account - on my new phone,” she said.

“I say new, but it was six months old.”

Patterson was then shown the records of the factory resets on her phone.

She said her son did the first reset (in February 2023), but she did the last three.

She said the dates on the records looked correct, but she was not sure about the times.

“So that had been my phone since the start of the year. In February (my son) damaged his own phone, so he needed a new phone, so I bought a new A23 and gave him the phone I had been using,” she said.

Patterson said she factory reset the phone on 2 August so she could use it again.

She said she charged it then imported contacts.

Asked about the next factory reset on 5 August, Patterson said she had put all of her apps on it, including her photos.

“I knew there were photos on there of mushrooms and I just panicked and didn’t want them to see them,” she said.

Mandy: “Who do you mean by them?”

Patterson: “The detectives.”

Asked if she did the factory reset on 6 August 2023, once her phone was already in police custody, Patterson said she did.

“So sometime after the search of the house and the police had brought me home, I thought ‘I wonder if I could log in and see where all of my devices are’,” she said.

“It was really stupid, but I thought ‘I wonder if they have been silly enough to leave it connected to the internet’, so I hit factory reset and it did.”

Patterson said she later received messages from Sally Ann Atkinson on 2 August 2023 asking about the ingredients in the meal.

She said they made her feel “very anxious”.

The court heard the message entailed Atkinson asking for information about the time and date of when she may have purchased the dehydrated mushrooms.

Mandy: At that stage, did you think any ingredients that you had bought from the supermarket were responsible for people becoming unwell?

Patterson: “No.”

Mandy: “And why didn’t you tell her?”

Patterson: “Because I was scared.”

Patterson has been shown a message she sent to Sally Ann Atkinson while she was in hospital.

In the message, Patterson said she would try and get information she requested to her as soon as possible but she was just dealing with a few things at hospital.

The court heard around the time she sent that text, Patterson was speaking to child protection officers in the hospital.

“I was anxious and it was very overwhelming,” she said.

Patterson said Tanya Patterson also visited her in hospital that day.

Patterson said she tried to find out more about the conditions of her lunch guests, but Tanya wouldn’t tell her more.

Patterson said while she was in hospital, she remembered having a conversation with her children about why they were in hospital.

She said she explained that there were concerns the lunch she cooked had made people sick.

Patterson said her children asked why they were at hospital if they weren’t at the lunch, and it opened up a conversation about mushrooms.

Patterson said the children later left to use the vending machine and she was in the room with Simon.

“During that conversation with the kids about the taste test, we had discussed that I had dried the mushrooms and I don’t remember if it was Simon or I or who had initiated it - but there was a conversation about how I used a dehydrator to do it.

“And he said to me ‘is that how you poisoned my parents?’ Using that dehydrator?”

Mandy: And what did you say?

Patterson: “Ofcourse not.”

Patterson said that conversation led her to reflect.

“It got me thinking about all of the times I had used it and how I had dried foraged mushrooms in it weeks earlier and I was starting to think ‘what if they had gone into the container with the Chinese mushrooms?’ Maybe that had happened.

“I was thinking maybe - maybe that is how this all happened.”

Mandy: “How did that make you feel?”

Patterson: “Scared.. Responsible. Really worried because child protection were involved and Simon appeared to be of the mind that this was intentional.. And I just got really scared.”

The court heard she later left hospital.

Patterson said when she arrived home, she felt “frantic”.

“Because people had eaten the meal and got sick.”

Patterson said she decided to take the dehydrator to the local tip.

“Child protection was coming to my home and I was worried about the conversation that might flow from the dehydrator.”

“I thought there might be evidence of that - evidence of any foraged mushrooms in there.”

Patterson said after leaving the hospital she went home, fed the animals, organised her daughter’s ballet rehearsal details, laid down a bit, and went to the toilet a couple of times.

She returned to the hospital more than an hour later.

“I remember going into the triage waiting room and the first person I interacted with was Dr Webster in the triage window,” she said.

“They set me up in a room all by itself with a bed on its own and I got into the bed and they assessed me.”

Patterson said she had a conversation with Dr Webster about the leftovers.

“The children came up in conversation and I think he asked me if they had the meal,” she said.

“I told him I had removed the pastry and mushrooms.”

Patterson said she remembered speaking to the police at some point, in regards to the leftovers, but she doesn’t remember who gave her the phone,

“I told them the leftovers they were after, I had put them in a bin, but I couldn’t remember if it was just the kitchen bin or if they had made it all the way to the outside bin.

“But first they wanted the code for the gate, so I gave them that.

“I told them they could come and get a key from me or the window was open and they could go in that way.”

Patterson said she also received a phone call from Simon’s brother, Matthew, asking where she bought the mushrooms.

She said she told him that she bought some from Woolworths and others from an Asian grocer in Melbourne.

“I was trying to convey I wasn’t sure, but these were the likely places they could be because that is where I shopped,” she said.

Asked by Mandy if that was the truth in the mind at her time, she said “yes, that is what I thought”.

Patterson said she later spoke to the doctors about picking up her children from school, but the medical staff pushed back against that idea.

Asked why she wanted to get them, she said “that’s a really hard question to answer.. it’s a bit absurd.. But I think at the time, I thought I am their mother and I want to be responsible for them.”

Patterson said one of the doctors said she didn’t think that was a good idea, and she said she didn’t know who else would be able to do it if it wasn’t her.

She said the nurse suggested someone else from the school might be able to help, or possibly asked if their father could get them.

Patterson said she felt Simon wouldn’t be able to get them because he had not helped her that morning and she felt that her presence might help calm her children in light of the situation.

Patterson said she also asked the nurse if she could tell her “what was going on?” and why they thought it was death cap mushrooms, but she declined to answer, citing privacy concerns.

Asked what she remembered about why she was asked to bring the kids to hospital, she said medics said the mushrooms may have leaked into the meat.

She said she understood the “logic of that” and that she did want them to be treated, but was concerned the “drastic step” of admitting them to hospital might be stressful for them.

Patterson said the kids seemed fine that morning and she hadn’t received any information from the school that they were otherwise.

Patterson said she had fluid replacement, saline, and medications while at hospital.

She was later transferred to Monash Hospital in Melbourne.

Patterson said she was given medication on the drive that made her feel a bit “loopy”.

“I remember the trolley from the ambulance being parked somewhere while they were waiting to give me a bed in the emergency department,” she said.

“I remember the door being opened at triage and there was Simon (and our children).

“Then I was put into a cubicle, waiting to be assessed.”

Patterson said when she woke up the next morning in Monash hospital, she was feeling a “lot better”.

Patterson said she received a call later that morning from Sally Ann Atkinson, from the Department of Public Health.

Patterson said she told her the mushrooms came from Woolworths and an Asian grocer in Melbourne and at that time, in her mind, those answers were “the truth”.

She said she later spoke to Simon on the phone that morning because she felt she might have to go to the hospital because the diarrhoea wasn’t resolving.

“Everytime I would drink water, it would go through me,” she said.

“I thought they would just give me some fluids. That they would have something stronger than Imodium.”

Patterson said she called Simon because she thought he could drive her, but he said he was too tired and so she drove herself.

When she arrived, Patterson said she immediately asked to use the bathroom, then returned back to the waiting room.

She said Dr Chris Webster came over to her and said there would be a wait because there were two critically ill people there and she said “that’s fine, I just have gastro.”

“My memory is that he said ‘we have been expecting you’ and he asked me to come through,” she said.

“It could be wrong (that memory) it’s just what I remember.

“I followed him in (to the urgent care centre) and I remember feeling a bit unsettled because it appeared he knew my name or it meant something and it threw me a bit.

“I remember him asking or wanting to confirm if I was the cook. I think he asked me where the ingredients from the beef wellington came from.”

Patterson said she told him she bought the ingredients from Woolies and asked why he was asking.

“He said there was a concern you have been exposed to death cap mushrooms.

“I was shocked and confused. I was just expecting to come in for saline for gastro.

“I didn’t see how death cap mushrooms could be in the meal and the information that I had was that I had diarrhoea and Don and Gail had been a bit unwell but that is all I knew.

“I remember feeling very puzzled.”

Patterson said one of the medics said she would need to have a particular medicine and be taken to Melbourne.

“I felt really stressed and anxious. I felt really overwhelmed,” she said.

Patterson said she had only gone to hospital prepared to be there for only a couple of hours.

Patterson said she went and told the nurse she wasn’t prepared and would have to go home and organise a few things, including feeding her animals and arrangements for her daughter’s ballet rehearsal that evening.

Patterson said she started to have diarrhoea around midnight after the 29 July 2023 lunch.

“I would get abdominal cramping and an urge to go,” she said.

“It felt quite frequent to me - sometimes 20 minutes or 30 minutes. It was hard to go to sleep.”

Patterson said she had diarrhoea medication, Imodium, and was able to go to sleep.

She said her daughter may have slept in her bed that night, but she wasn’t sure.

Patterson said she woke up about 10am the next morning and went downstairs.

She said her son was in the tv room, lying on the couch, when she walked in.

Patterson said she didn’t eat anything that morning, but she drank tea from a “coffee cup, or something like that”.

“I think I made some herbal tea, like lemon and ginger or something like that,” she said.

Patterson said her son told him “mummy, I have a sore tummy, can we not go to church today?”

She said in light of her diarrhoea, she thought he had some kind of gastro bug like her.

“I told him I don’t feel well either, we are not going to church today,” she said.

Patterson said she remembers Simon ringing her sometime later in the morning to ask if she had gone to church, and she said no.

“He said Don and Gail had diarrhoea too. We spoke twice that day. He said they were getting fluids at Korumburra Hospital, but I can’t be sure if that was the first or second phone call,” she said.

Patterson said she continued to have nausea and diarrhoea, but her toilet visits were becoming less frequently.

She her son had flying lessons that day, and despite her son offering to skip it because she felt unwell, she decided to take him.

Patterson said her son’s sore tummy had “miraculously disappeared” about an hour after she told her.

“He would wheel out the sore tummy often if there was something he didn’t want to do - so I had a healthy sceptism about it. But the fact I felt unwell that morning made me think maybe I am being unfair this time,” she said.

Patterson said she had an urge to go to the toilet about half an hour into the drive, so she pulled over and went “off into the bush and went to the toilet”.

“So I had diarrhoea. So I cleaned myself up a bit with tissues and put it in a dog poo bag and put it in my handbag and we hit the road again.”

Patterson was asked about CCTV footage which showed her going to the toilet for only a few seconds at Caldermeade BP.

She said she went into the toilet to put the dog poo bag in the bin.

She said she then bought a sandwich and sour straps for her children and returned to the car.

Patterson said she did not eat any of the items she purchased.

The court heard she received a call on the way from the flying instructor to say it was cancelled, so she turned the car around.

Patterson said they stopped at a donut van on the way home, and she gave the children her wallet to get some food.

The court previously heard Patterson drank a coffee at the stop.

Asked if she wanted a coffee, Patterson said she asked the kids to get her a drink and she would normally have a coffee when they stopped there, which is why her children likely brought one back.

When they returned home, Patterson said she “ran to the toilet” due to her diarrhoea, but her nausea was starting to subside.

She said the kids then went upstairs to play video games and she started to think about dinner, and decided she would give them leftovers.

“I removed the mushroom and pastry and put the meat on two plates and put potatoes and beans on two plates and microwaved them,” she said.

“I thought I would chance a bit of food, so I made myself a bowl of cereal and had a couple of spoonfuls, but it didn’t go down too well, so I stopped.”

Patterson said she remained “a little bit off in the tummy” and the diarrhoea continued that night.

She said she went to bed around 10pm or 11pm.

“At some point, I felt the diarrhoea coming back a bit more strongly than it had been and that happened for a few more hours,” she said.

“I didn’t look at my watch - but it was around 1am or 2am I would guess.

“I think it was around 5.30am or 6am I gave up on getting sleep and got up for the final time. “

Patterson said she got the kids lunches and school bags ready and dropped them off at the bus stop.

Patterson has told the court a boy pictured in footage from CCTV from Subway is not her son.

The court was previously shown CCTV footage which showed a red car dropping off a boy at Subway, understood to be Patterson’s son, on the evening of the lunch.

While the boy is inside Subway, the car can be seen driving off then returning 11 minutes later.

The footage was obtained by Victoria Police.

Asked by Patterson whether the boy in question was her son, Patterson said it wasn’t.

Patterson said she went to Subway around 7.20pm but she did not leave the car park while her son was in the store.

“I remember parking, and (my son) walked in, and I waited in the car, then he walked out,” she said.

Patterson was then shown the CCTV footage.

She said the car was the same colour as her, but it looked “ a little bit different” than her car, but she couldn’t say whether it was or wasn’t with certainty.