The accused, Australian woman Erin Patterson, is being cross-examined by the prosecution in a triple-murder trial
Three people died after eating a beef Wellington lunch at Ms Patterson's house, while another became ill, but survived
The prosecution says Ms Patterson deliberately included poisonous mushrooms in a meal she served to guests – she denies this and her defence team says it was a "terrible accident"
The prosecution showed Ms Patterson a photo from her phone, suggesting it showed her calculating a lethal dose of death cap mushrooms, which Ms Patterson denied
Ms Patterson was also asked why in the days after the lunch she repeatedly lied to police about owning a food dehydrator, and said it was a "stupid knee-jerk reaction"
Ms Patterson denied telling her lunch guests she had cancer, contradicting evidence from Ian Wilkinson, who survived the lunch
Watch: Three things you need to know about Australia's mushroom murder trial
Simon Atkinson
reporting from Morwell
Erin Patterson is telling the court she was itted to Leongatha Hospital, where she was given fluids and also the liver protection drug N-acetylcysteine (NAC), before being taken by ambulance to the Monash Medical Centre in Melbourne. That’s a drive of about 120km (75 miles).
Koh Ewe
Live reporter
When she was brought into urgent care, Ms Patterson recalls the doctor at some point asking if her children had also eaten the meal.
"I don't how it came up but I had conversation first with Dr Webster about that," she says, adding that she told him the children had eaten the leftovers from the meal on Sunday.
She had removed the mushrooms from the meal, she says, but doctors were worried the toxins may have also contaminated the meat.
Ms Patterson tells the court she was initially reluctant to bring them to hospital.
"It wasn't that I didn't want them to be treated, but more the drastic step of putting them in hospital, I wanted to understand that was really necessary."
After the doctors outlined their concerns further, she came to believe having them itted "made sense".
Just a reminder, before lunch the jury was hearing Erin Patterson explain why she went to the hospital two days after the lunch at her house in July 2023.
She had been detailing how she started feeling sick the night of the meal, on the Saturday, and by the Monday she was worried she had gastro and needed fluids.
Katy Watson
reporting from Morwell
There was lots of information to digest this morning - mostly focussed on the fateful meal of July 2023.
Erin Patterson’s lawyer addressed some of the lies she told police in the days after inviting her relatives around.
Her justification for saying she had ovarian cancer when she didn’t was because she was embarrassed about telling her family that she was in fact planning on weight-loss surgery. She also itted her family's concern about her health felt good and she didn't want that attention to stop.
She also spoke more about binge-eating, which she touched upon on yesterday. She said she ate two-thirds of a cake that her mother-in-law had brought after the fateful lunch – and then made herself sick.
The 50-year-old also addressed the issue of the dinner plates she used to serve the beef Wellington.
Earlier on in the trial we heard that Heather Wilkinson had questioned why she had given the guests different coloured and sized plates to the one she ate off. Ms Patterson said there were no assigned seating arrangements or plates.
In just a few hours, Ms Patterson and her lawyer covered a lot of ground. And now the court is back again.
The court is just taking a short lunch break but we're expecting the jury back in about 15 minutes.
Stay with us as we bring you all the updates when the proceedings resume.
A 14-member jury is weighing up evidence to decide whether Erin Patterson is guilty of three charges of murder and one of attempted murder.
The case centres on a beef Wellington lunch she served at Ms Patterson's Leongatha home in July 2023.
Three people died shortly after the lunch – Ms Patterson's former in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66. Heather's husband, Ian Wilkinson, survived after being in an induced coma for weeks.
Prosecutors say Ms Patterson intentionally served the toxic mushrooms – she has pleaded not guilty, saying it was unintentional.
Here is what we have learned as Ms Patterson gives evidence for a third day:
As her symptoms worsened, Ms Patterson says she decided to take herself to hospital on the Monday - two days after the lunch.
"I thought perhaps I needed to... get some fluids," she tells the court. "Every time I drank water, it went through me."
When she arrived, she recalls a doctor asked her name, then said something along the lines of "we've been expecting you".
Earlier, two of the other lunch guests had presented at the same hospital, desperately ill.
Medical staff asked if there was a possibility she could have eaten death cap mushrooms.
“I was shocked but confused... I was just expecting to come in for saline for gastro," she says.
“I didn’t see how death cap mushrooms could be in the meal."
Hospital staff then told her she needed to have a "particular type of medicine" and she would need to be "sent straight to Melbourne in an ambulance".
"I felt really anxious... really overwhelmed," adding that she had thought she'd only be at the hospital "for a couple of hours".
Lana Lam
Live reporter
We're now hearing a lot of detail about Ms Patterson's bowel movements.
She tells the court that the morning after the lunch, she was still feeling ill. She got up around 10am and made herself a herbal tea - lemon and ginger.
She says Simon (her estranged husband) called her and said Don and Gail had diarrhoea too.
"We spoke twice that day," she recalls, adding that during one of those calls, Simon told her Don and Gail were "getting fluids" at Korumburra Hospital.
Ms Patterson says her diarrhoea was less frequent, saying it was about "hourly", but her attempt to eat a bowl of cereal at dinner did not end well.
Erin Patterson is now telling the jury she began feeling sick later in the evening.
"I started to have diarrhoea... somewhere between 10 and midnight," she said.
"It lasted for some hours. I took an immodium or two at some point in the early hours," she says, referring to a drug which helps treat gastroenteritis symptoms.
The next morning, her son was lying on the couch and complaining of a sore tummy and asked not to go to church.
"In light of my diarrhoea, I thought he had some sort of gastro bug like me. I told him I didn’t feel well either – we aren’t going to church today."
Simon Atkinson
reporting from Morwell
Back to the events after the lunch...
The trial has previously heard that the guests barely touched the orange cake that Gail Patterson had brought to lunch.
But Erin Patterson said that after the guests had left she ate a slice of the cake.
"[Then] another piece. And another piece.” She kept eating until it was all gone, Ms Patterson tells the court.
She estimated she ate two-thirds of the dessert. Afterwards, she said, she felt sick, went to the bathroom and "brought up" the food.
She yesterday told the court she had a history of disordered eating.
She says she felt much better after "bringing up" the food.
Katy Watson
reporting from Morwell
Rewinding a few minutes again, Ms Patterson was asked to describe the chatter around the dining table.
"At one point I Don talking about his brother that was battling throat cancer."
"It was right at the end of the meal and I mentioned that I had an issue a year or two earlier where I thought I’d had ovarian cancer," she told the court.
"And then – I’m not proud of this but – I led them to believe I might be needing some treatment in regard to that in the next few weeks or months."
Her lawyer asks if she lied to them. "I did lie," she says.
"I was really embarrassed – I was ashamed of the fact I didn’t have control over my body or what I ate... I didn’t want to tell anybody but I shouldn’t have lied to them."
Asked how they responded to the revelation, she starts crying and says "they all showed a lot of comion".
"We saw Simon’s car driving into the driveway, coming back with the kids and so Ian said why don’t we pray for Erin so that’s what we did."
Lana Lam
Live digital reporter
Just a few minutes ago, Ms Patterson was shown a photo of the table where the fatal lunch happened - marked up by Ian Wilkinson, the sole surviving lunch guest, to show where the guests sat.
The defence counsel asked Ms Patterson if there were any assigned plates at the lunch?
"No," she says.
Were there any assigned plates?
"No," she replies.
Simon Atkinson
reporting from Morwell
Erin Patterson is detailing how much each person ate at the meal.
She says Ian, Heather and Don ate all their portions, and that Gail had eaten quite a lot of hers too.
"Don finished off what she hadn’t eaten," Ms Patterson said.
Asked how much of the beef Wellington she had consumed, Ms Patterson says. “I ate a quarter, a third, somewhere around there, of mine.”
A sixth parcel of the beef Wellington was left over from the meal, she says.
The trial has previously heard the guests were very full from lunch so didn't eat much of dessert.
However Ms Patterson says after the guests had left she ate two thirds of the orange cake which Gail had brought and then made herself sick.
We're hearing evidence about who did and said what at the lunch, here's a reminder of who attended:
Lana Lam
Live digital reporter
Earlier we heard Ms Patterson recount the moment her guests started to arrive.
"Heather brought a really nice fruit platter and Gail brought an orange cake," she says.
"We had a bit of conversation about the house... we went out to the garden and had a look around."
We are back from a brief break and Erin Patterson is now answering questions about help she was given in serving the meal.
At least one of her guests asked her if she wanted a hand, she tells the court.
"[It was] when I put the plates out, just as I was putting potato – I am a little bit fuzzy on that – it was on the threshold of being about to serve," she says.
"Did you need any help?” her lawyer asks. “No I didn’t," she responds.
"I would have said something like. 'No it’s fine, it’s under control, there’s not much to do'," she says.
Katy Watson
reporting from Morwell
We're now hearing Erin Patterson explain how the meal was served, which has had a lot of focus in the trial.
Ms Patterson says Ian Wilkinson and Don Patterson had been chatting near her bookshelf while their wives had been looking into her pantry, impressed by the size of it.
Her lawyer asks her about the dinner plates. Earlier in the trial we heard that Heather Wilkinson, while ill in hospital, had questioned why Erin Patterson had used different plates for her guests to the one she ate off.
"I think there’s a couple of black, a couple of white, one that’s red on top and black underneath and then I’ve got one that daughter made at kindergarten," she says.
She tells the court she told the guests to grab a plate while she finished off the gravy.
Asked to clarify who took the plates to the table, she says she didn't see it happen and assumed everyone grabbed a plate, but accepts Ian's earlier evidence that Heather and Gail had taken two each.
She is asked if she re which plate she ate off. No, she replies.
Simon Atkinson
reporting from Morwell
Ms Patterson has also been asked about a text message exchange with her estranged husband Simon, when he pulled out of the lunch the day before.
"I felt a bit hurt and I felt a bit stressed," Ms Patterson told the court.
Five minutes after Mr Paterson declined the invite saying he did not feel "comfortable", she sent a message saying it was "really disappointing".
"I've spent many hours this week preparing lunch for tomorrow which has been exhausting in light of the issues I'm facing and spent a small fortune... to make beef wellingtons because I wanted it to be a special meal."
"I may not be able to host a lunch like this again for some time. It's important to me that you're all here tomorrow and that I can have the conversations that I need to have. I hope you'll change your mind."
She said she wanted to make Simon "feel bad" about not coming - and itted she had not done any preparation apart from looking up the recipe and going shopping.
Ottilie Mitchell
Live reporter
We are getting into detail about the preparation that went into Ms Patterson's lunch.
Step one: Prepare a "duxelle" - minced and sautéed mushrooms - that she'd bought from Woolworths, a supermarket chain.
Step two: Taste. It was "a little bland", Miss Patterson said.
And so she turned to step three: adding additional dried mushrooms from a container in her fridge, which she thought she'd bought in Melbourne.
"Now I think there's a possibility that there were foraged ones as well," she told the court, choking up.