A woman has passed away and two others have been allowed to leave the hospital following reports that they consumed alcohol at a wellness retreat in a small Victorian town close to Ballarat.
At before 12 am on Saturday, the 53-year-old woman from Ringwood North passed away at the Soul Barn, a “creative wellbeing centre,” located on Fraser Street in Clunes. It is said that she had consumed alcohol.
The woman is known to have gone into cardiac arrest; an ambulance was dispatched, but she died there and then.
For observation, two more individuals were brought to Grampians Health Ballarat Base Hospital.
Since then, they have been let go.
In addition to compiling a report for the coroner, police are looking into what happened.
The Age adds that while investigators are looking into whether a drink with a mushroom base was ingested, they haven’t ruled out the possibility of consuming other potentially harmful chemicals.
Dr. Jonathan Karro, a toxicologist, advised people to use mushrooms with caution.
“Whenever there’s more than one person who seems to get ill following the ingestion of any substance… meal, especially mushroom containing, one needs to consider whether there was a toxic product… including a mushroom in whatever was ingested,” Karro stated.
“Everyone needs to be very careful… one of the most important pieces of advice I could offer is essentially never to go foraging for mushrooms.”
Soul Barn presents itself as a holistic and alternative health provider.
The company posted the following on its Facebook page on Sunday: “My deepest apologies – Sound healing is xld today – email with refund and details have been sent to all booked x.” The company has not yet published a statement regarding the incident.
The company had previously announced that a herbalist using “wild foraged plants” will be present on the weekend.
About 36 kilometres to the north of Ballarat is the town of Clunes.
