Inside Erin Patterson's family life a decade before her notorious mushroom murders

7NEWS

3 days ago

A decade before Erin Patterson became Australia's infamous mushroom murderer, she and her husband Simon were like many young families delicately trying to balance the demands of life and parenthood.
At the time, the couple were living and working in Western Australia while raising their then four-year-old son. But in 2013, after spending about six years in the country's west, the family decided to relocate back to their home state of Victoria.
Rather than flying between the states, the family drove 1350km along a corrugated sandy track through the red Australian desert as they made their way back east.
Now, photos of the trip of a lifetime have surfaced — offering a glimpse into the Patterson family's life before their world would be irreparably fractured just 10 years later by her wicked crimes.
The images taken by Simon, an amateur photographer, were shared at the time in a post on a blogging website where he detailed the family's 'Australian Outback Adventure' along the Anne Beadell Hwy, which runs horizontally through Western and South Australia.
The pictures show their campsite set up under a starry night sky, the couple's son playing cricket, a camel and plane wreckage they encountered along the way, and shots of the stunning, orange, rugged terrain.
'One of the greatest feelings in the world is camping under the stars in the Australian outback,' he wrote.
'There is nothing like the peace and tranquility, hundreds of miles from civilisation. It's a real privilege to safely pitch a tent with one's family and enjoy a simple campfire meal in the crisp, clear air.
'The view of the Milky Way above is breathtaking and mesmerising, inviting travellers to stare upwards for hours on end.'
At the time of the trip, Patterson was 38-years-old and pregnant with the couple's second child.
Simon said the family's household possessions followed behind them, transported in containers by rail, as they made the cross-country journey in their 4WD.
While the most common west-to-east route across southern part of Australia is the bitumen-sealed Eyre Hwy, Simon said the family had previously crossed the Nullabor Plain via that road and wanted to try a 'more remote' course.
The Anne Beadell Hwy runs through the Great Victoria Desert, which was a site for British atomic bomb tests in the 1950s.
Simon said they chose campsites 'far' from the bomb test sites, heeding warnings to travellers to avoid spending too much time in areas with possible nuclear radiation exposure.
Along their journey, the family came across many camels — introduced in the 1800s from the Middle East and now considered a pest in the Australian outback — as well as the wreckage of a plane carrying census forms that had crashed several years earlier.
During their five-day journey, they grappled with no mobile phone coverage, only saw 10 other parties, and relied mostly on resources they had brought with them, topping up their fuel and basic supplies at a small general store roughly mid-way along the route.
Simon said their son managed the trip 'very well' as long as he played cricket with him one or twice every day.
At her jury trial earlier this year, Patterson told the court she and Simon married in 2007 while living in Melbourne, then packed up their belongings to travel, before finally settling in Western Australia where their son was born in 2009.
During their time there, Patterson opened a second-hand bookstore in the small rural town of Pemberton, in the state's southwest, while her husband worked at the local council.
'I spent months travelling around Western Australia collecting books to sell there. I went to a lot of book fairs and libraries and estates selling their old stocks,' Patterson told the jury as she gave evidence on the stand.
'I painted the inside and I bought about 30 or 35 book shelves from IKEA and I got things like the internet and phone set up.'
Patterson also told the jury they decided to move back to Victoria due to a number of factors, including her son being extroverted and she had just fallen pregnant and they wanted to be closer to Simon's parents, Don and Gail Patterson.
'We packed up our home in 2013 and it took a few months to come back,' she said.
'We first went to New Zealand for a few weeks and when we got back we stayed with Don and Gail for a good six weeks.
'It was cramped — in that all three of us were in one room, but it didn't matter because Don and Gail were so welcoming. It was a really good experience.'
Patterson and Simon permanently separated in 2015, the year after returning to Victoria, after experiencing bouts of splitting and reconciling from as early as 2009.
Last month, Patterson, 50, was found guilty of murdering Don, Gail, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson after serving up death cap mushroom-laced beef wellingtons at a family lunch at her Leongatha home, in Victoria's Gippsland, on 29 July 2023.
She was also found guilty of the attempted murder of Heather's husband Ian Wilkinson, who attended the lunch but survived.
She will be sentenced later this year.