As her liver collapsed, a dying mushroom patient gently uttered six words to her doctor

Doctor Chris Webster had medical records ready, splayed before him on the bench. Hospital staff were warned to keep clear. He had even discussed his intentions with the director of medical services and the chief executive officer at Leongatha Hospital. As he dialled triple zero, all he needed to do was remember not to swear.

“This is Dr Chris Webster calling from Leongatha Hospital. I have a concern regarding a patient that presented here earlier, that has left the building and is potentially exposed to a fatal toxin,” Webster calmly told the operator.

“The last name is Patterson. Erin.”

In the brief conversation that followed, Webster carefully laid out what he knew. Erin Patterson, an introverted mother of two from Leongatha, had served a meal of beef Wellington to four of her relatives over the weekend. The guests had fallen ill with gastro-like symptoms. Two were in intensive care at Dandenong Hospital. He was about to transfer the other two there from Leongatha.

Minutes after staff said she may have consumed highly toxic death cap mushrooms, Patterson, who said she was suffering from gastro-like symptoms, discharged herself from hospital.

“It was time for the nurse to begin observations, and I was managing the other critically unwell patients,” Webster told the operator. “I had a brief chat with her about where the mushrooms were obtained, and while I was attending [to] the other patients, the nurse informed me she had discharged herself against medical advice.”

It was the morning of July 31, 2023, and the triple-zero call would mark a crucial point in a fateful 24-hour hospital shift that would come to define the next two years of Webster’s life.

It would be the first time that emergency services would hear about the deadly lunch that would eventually claim the lives of three people, triggering a chain of events that eventually led police to uncover the beef Wellington leftovers inside a paper bag at the bottom of Patterson’s bin.

A still from CCTV of Erin Patterson inside Leongatha Hospital was among exhibits shown to the jurors.Credit: Supreme Court of Victoria

Two years after Webster’s phone call, Patterson would be found guilty of three counts of murder over the deaths of her parents-in-law Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson.

She would also be found guilty of attempted murder over a brush with death experienced by Heather’s husband, Korumburra Baptist pastor Ian Wilkinson.

“You dabble in creative writing, and you think about the narrative, and I’m like, ‘if I wrote this, it would be criticised for being over the top. Too far-fetched’, and here it is, we are living it,” Webster tells The Age.

The hours after the ‘Michelin-star meal’

Now that the murder trial is over, Webster feels ready to talk about the madness of it all – his role as a tiny cog in the machine of the story that captured international headlines. The anxiety and the weight of the case on his shoulders. The exhilaration of stepping out of the witness box. The relief of seeing survivor Ian Wilkinson standing on his own two feet.

“Until I started talking about the whole situation, I didn’t realise how much it was affecting me in terms of my levels of tension,” says Webster, rocking his signature mullet and a pair of Coca-Cola socks. “It was quite difficult here because [for] some of the doctors that work here – these were their friends. These were people that were part of their church community.”

Dr Chris Webster, who gave evidence in the murder trial of Erin Patterson.Credit: Jason South

Webster meets this masthead at the clinic he owns in Leongatha, a single-storey brick building on the main drag. The waiting room is teeming with patients, mostly elderly. Last year alone, the clinic handled 54,287 consultations, according to a screen hanging on the wall.

As he talks inside his consultation room, we are interrupted by a revolving door of frazzled medical students on rotation in the bush. Webster, who has spent the past decade working as a GP in town, dashes in and out, patiently answering their questions and checking on the patients. There’s a suspected asthma attack, a wart that has healed better than expected, an accidental needle prick, and a last-minute consultation for a potential case of tonsilitis (a favour to the family he knows well).

Thankfully, none of it is serious enough to set off the high-pitched alarm tucked beneath Webster’s desk that would send him scrambling out of the room.

“If we hear that sound, I’m going to be a blur because I’ll jump up and go find out what the problem is, but unless we hear that sound, we’re good to go,” he warns, as we embark on what would become a four-hour conversation.

Webster’s room is decorated with a mix of children’s drawings, anatomy models, and Brisbane Lions memorabilia. Small figurines of Frozen movie character Elsa and cartoon dog Bluey adorn the top of his computer screen. A large print of the Marvel movie The Avengers hangs between the desk and a sink.

It’s not an unusual day for Webster, who grew up seeing his father, also a GP, stitching up patients on the couch of their Glen Iris home on weekends. But it feels a lifetime away from the madness of July 2023.

It was shortly after 9am on July 30, 2023, and Webster was barely an hour into his 24-hour on-call shift at Leongatha Hospital with a ward full of patients.

Webster recalls the day vividly.

“It was too early for the senior football matches, so I didn’t have to worry about dislocated shoulders or head injuries or punctured lungs,” Webster says.

Ian Wilkinson and his wife Heather had been brought in with gastroenteritis symptoms.

“By the time I did get around to going into the plaster room where Ian and Heather were, I felt like I was on top of my day, which is an unusual feeling.”

With nothing to suggest the couple was suffering from anything other than regular food poisoning, Webster kept them hydrated and managed their symptoms. But an unexpected call came in from a registrar at Dandenong Hospital.

Lunch survivor and Korumburra Baptist Church pastor Ian Wilkinson.Credit: Jason South

The caller was Dr Beth Morgan, who was ringing to tell Webster that they suspected Don and Gail Patterson, who arrived at Dandenong Hospital the previous night, were suffering from toxic mushroom poisoning. The Wilkinsons had shared the same lunch with them and should be started on medication immediately.

Webster says his thoughts went from something like “oh f---” to “we have to get this medicine into these patients’ bloodstream as quickly as possible”.

“Georgia [my wife] has said: ‘I’ve never seen you take a call and leave the house and get to work so quickly’,” he says.

“There was just a sense of absolute kind of disbelief that this is happening, and probably an element of disappointment with myself because ... it wasn’t an idea that formed in my mind to ask about the mushrooms.

“The idea that it could be something so enormous – a premeditated poisoning of a Michelin-star meal with mushrooms – was so far from what my brain was prepared to accept.”

Webster says liver function tests may have detected abnormalities in the Wilkinsons earlier, but Leongatha Hospital did not have the equipment. Instead, blood samples were taken by taxi to a lab in Wonthaggi nearly 40 kilometres away. By the time the test results came back, the couple was under the care of doctors in Melbourne.

Heather and Ian Wilkinson.

The last words Heather said to Webster before the ambulance took off were: “Thank you for looking after me.”

“I knew that she was going off to her death,” Webster says.

“Heather was one of the gentlest souls, [the] kindest person. Her liver is falling apart inside her body, and the thing that she makes sure she does before she leaves the hospital in an ambulance: thank the doctor.”

The Wilkinsons were taken to Leongatha Hospital.Credit: Jason South

Later that morning, when Erin Patterson reappeared at the hospital, close to two hours after discharging herself, the words from Morgan echoed in Webster’s mind.

The stay-at-home mother told Webster she fed the lunch leftovers to her two children, but did not want to stress them out by taking them out of school to get them medically assessed. The GP was stern.

“They can be scared and alive, or dead,” he told Patterson.

That message would later make headlines around the world.

Coca-Cola with a side of Hugo Boss

As the start of Erin Patterson’s murder trial drew closer, Webster’s brain was awash with panicked thoughts and far-fetched hypotheticals. What if the judge collapsed mid-evidence, and he was the only doctor in the room? Would there be a defibrillator? What if he forgot to bow when he walked into the room? Or if he swore in the witness box?

“We started practising for court, like a play or a movie, and auditioning. I’d say to my 14-year-old, normally, ‘hey, Max, can you get me a Coke from the fridge?’ and I would say, ‘excuse me, your honour, would you mind passing me a Coca-Cola’,” Webster says.

“Just using the court terminology, trying to speak without swearing, and trying to sound professional and calm, whilst at the same time just f---ing shitting myself about having to go to a triple murder [trial].”

Dr Chris Webster waves to the cameras in his Hugo Boss suit outside court.Credit: Jason South

Webster had only been in court once before, testifying about an autopsy in a culpable driving case about a decade earlier. That day, he stumbled on his own words and was teased by the defence barrister (“I wanted to say ‘the environment’, but I said ‘atmosphere’ because I was nervous.”)

“No media was interested in me that day, and I certainly didn’t wear a Hugo Boss suit,” Webster says.

This time, all cameras pointed at the country doctor who bought his new grey suit at Chadstone Shopping Centre and paired it with colourful watermelon socks.

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Bruised by his earlier experience, Webster enlisted a friend to drive him and his wife to Morwell and keep him calm by cracking jokes referencing the 1997 Aussie cinematic classic, The Castle.

Too nervous to stomach a proper meal, he went “full eight-year-old boy mode” and had a bowl of chips and a chocolate milkshake for lunch. He also swapped his usual Diet Coke for the full-strength stuff.

“You don’t drink Diet Coke when you’re doing testimony for triple-murder trials. That’s when you go back to the full stuff,” Webster says.

Later that day, when his face appeared on news bulletins across the country, Webster received a text from the sales assistant who sold him the suit: “I saw you on the news. The suit looks great. I’m glad you went with a green tie.”

After giving evidence, feeling the weight of the trial lift off his shoulders was exhilarating, Webster says. Almost as much as watching the Lions win an AFL grand final.

The following day, Webster says he could barely get up from the couch. The adrenaline and worry that kept him awake leading up to the trial had vanished, replaced by the lethargy that pre-empts the crash of surviving something so enormous.

“When you’re actually part of it, you’re like, ‘oh, this is kind of like walking around with a loaded machine gun’. There’s a lot of responsibility to handle this the right way, and not just have it all blow up in your face,” Webster says.

But Webster dusted himself off the next day and was back in his consulting rooms.

“I don’t know if people have a fantastic concept of how a small number of general practitioners keep a country town hospital going,” he says.

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Webster is worried about the future of general practice and the chronic shortage of GPs in the country. By being in the spotlight, he hopes to inspire young doctors to take a punt and move to the regions. “Let’s use some of that limelight to promote Leongatha,” he says.

As we conclude the interview and he locks up the clinic for the night, it feels like Webster might also be closing a chapter.

“I’ve been saying at lunchtime, just joking, tearoom banter: ‘Well, she has to be found guilty because if she isn’t, then I’m not going to eat food from anything other than a tin again’,” Webster says.

“I don’t know if it’s a paranoia, or a sort of fantasy, or if it’s a legitimate fear – I honestly can’t quite work it out at this stage – but I would feel a lot more at ease if Erin was found guilty for her crimes.”

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