FIVE days ago, a headline in the Bangladesh Post screamed: “Fatal family lunch mystery grips Australia”.
The report continues: “Two Saturdays ago, five people sat down for a family meal in a tiny Australian town. Within a week, three would be dead, a fourth fighting for life, and the fifth under investigation for potentially poisoning her guests with wild mushrooms.”
‘Leongatha’ is named in the sixth paragraph, ‘Korumburra’ in the eighth.
In the Washington Post it was similar: “She invited four people over for lunch, a week later three were dead”.
“Australia is gripped by the mysterious deaths of three people in a suspected poisoning case that reads like a fictional thriller.”
Leongatha is first mentioned in the fifth paragraph.
It’s not until paragraph 20 that Korumburra gets named.
“The Leongatha deaths have rocked the local community. A hub for dairy farms that dot the lush Gippsland countryside, the town has fewer than 6000 residents. Korumburra, the nearby town where the victims lived, has a population of about 4700.”
The South China Morning Post made sure much of Asia heard about it: “Australian police probe ‘death cap’ mushrooms that allegedly killed 3 after family lunch”.
Leongatha comes up in the third paragraph.
The Middle Eastern-based media service Aljazeera carried the story on its nightly TV news and followed it up online: “Lethal mushroom lunch suspected as Australian police probe three deaths.” Leongatha is named in the second paragraph.
The intriguing story has received worldwide coverage in the past week, likely with more, much more to come, we are told, and Leongatha, where the lunch was served, has been prominent, Korumburra, where the community has lost three highly regarded residents, not so much.
Google the word ‘Leongatha’ today, and the sponsored listings at the top of the page are all about “Mushroom deaths in Leongatha” and “Inside the lunch tragedy that rocked a small town”.
Further down, Wikipedia and Travel Victoria references to Leongatha take over as “a Gippsland dairy town and cultural centre… with access to an 87km rail trail” but subsequent pages are laced with the mushroom mystery.
So, will the town name of ‘Leongatha’ be forever marked, like Snowtown, Milperra, Bangalow and even Wooreen before it, with its connection to a heinous event?
Or will the blemish fade away if the incident turns out to be all just a terrible mistake?
To date, homicide squad police insist the deaths of the three Korumburra people, sisters Gail Patterson 70 and Heather Wilkinson 66, and Gail’s husband, Don 70, a former Korumburra High School teacher, are “unexplained”.
The fourth man, Ian Wilkinson 68, who sat down for the family lunch, in Leongatha served by Gail and Don’s estranged daughter-in-law, Erin Patterson 48, remains in a critical condition in the Austin Hospital, on the list for a liver transplant.
Yesterday Leongatha played Moe in the Gippsland League football, a town that has had its own brush with international infamy.
The murder of 13-month-old toddler Jaidyn Leskie, his disappearance from his Lincoln Street home in Moe on June 15, 1997, discovery of his body at Blue Rock Dam on January 1, 1998 and subsequent investigation shocked the world.
At the time, Moe Football Netball Club President, Manny Gelagotis, a former Gippsland Falcons soccer player, was a businessman in the town, later involved in the Committee for Moe.
He admires Leongatha and is sympathetic of its plight.
“It’s only natural, people are going to ask. It’s human nature,” said Gelagotis of visitors and others from outside the area wanting to know the details.
Did you get sick of it? What about the insults and the misinformation?
“It’s unfair for people to say it but that incident wasn’t us, no one wanted it, but it happened.
“We know our community, it’s not perfect, but we love it. However, it was a serious incident, and the important thing was finding out why it happened and addressing the cause.
“Yeah, certainly, it affected the town and even business for a while and it tested our resilience. You’ve got to focus on the good things that you do.
"You’ve got to ignore all the noise and look at the cause,” he said.
