Stan McDowall.
Just listening to her voice over the phone in the final days of her life, Penny Dixon could tell that her younger sister Rachael was happier than she had been in years.
Two decades after divorcing the father of her only child, health therapist Rachael had rekindled her love for him and the couple were on the verge of moving in together again. Their son Matthew was happily studying at university and on his way to becoming a top cricketer in Melbourne, where Southland-born Rachael had spent much of her adult life.
But there was another, more controversial reason that the clean-living, super-fit 53-year-old felt so confident about her upcoming future.
Over the previous two years, says Penny, a wellness guru that Rachael trusted had introduced her to a form of therapy using hallucinogenic “magic” mushrooms.
In 2023, Australia changed the law to allow licensed psychiatrists to prescribe psilocybin, the active ingredient in the mushrooms, for certain mental health conditions. But guru Diane Mathews, 54, illegally used the mushrooms to make tea she gave to clients paying more than $500 each at so-called “healing retreats”.
In April 2024, in what was to be their final conversation, Rachael told her sister about her hopes for what she had planned to be her sixth and last session with Mathews.
“If someone could beam their smile down a phone, that’s what Rachael was doing,” says Penny, 55, at her home in Invercargill, close to where the girls grew up, before Rachael joined the army as an electrician.
“She was fit, healthy and so happy. Rachael described this therapy session as a homecoming and said it was the last time she was going to do it because she was going to get all the answers she wanted. She said she would tell me all the details, but she never got the chance.”
Instead, it was their distraught mother Paula who rang Penny to tell her that Rachael had died in circumstances that remain shrouded in doubt.
A post-mortem found no conclusive cause of death and a coroner’s inquest was adjourned while police decided whether to charge Mathews, who had failed to revive Rachael before an ambulance arrived.
Eventually, on 12 March 2025, mother-of-two Mathews unexpectedly pleaded guilty to trafficking a drug of dependence and was fined $3000, with no conviction recorded. The outcome has left Rachael’s family furious.
“We were gutted and horrified, and I believe the police were very disappointed as well because no one’s been held accountable for my sister’s death,” says Penny, who had been expecting a
full trial to reveal exactly what happened, including evidence from two other clients who had gone to hospital apparently suffering debilitating anxiety that same night.
“Rachael had told me she’d felt unwell and had a racing heart after the previous session,” adds Penny, who had reservations about her sister using psilocybin, as did Rachael’s ex-husband Richard Mountain, a retired policeman.
“Richard had taken her to hospital for extensive checks and she was given a clean bill of health. She reassured me, saying that everyone under the influence of the mushrooms would have a support person. She trusted Mathews. She’d known her for seven years and had become a friend.”
Penny, their brother Tony and their parents flew to Melbourne to arrange a discreet funeral, then Penny tracked down Mathews and rang her, spending an hour on the phone.
“I was very angry as we didn’t know what had happened,” she recalls. “When I asked Mathews about what Rachael had told her, she said it was all confidential. She said that she had to respect her privacy.”
Richard, 58, had expected Mathews to be held accountable for Rachael’s death. He tells us, “There’s still a pending coronial inquest and if it’s an open inquest, I’ll give a statement. I have strong views on the fact it was an illicit drug prescribed without any medicinal knowledge or expertise.”
Richard suspects psilocybin can build up in the body and that Rachael was given ever-increasing doses. He says, “I believe it was going to be a large dose given to her the night she died.”
For now, Richard is left caring for Matthew – who is still too traumatised by his mother’s death to speak about her – and reflecting on what they’ve lost.
“I can’t remember a time when Rachael wasn’t smiling or laughing,” he says. “She was always busy, doing courses and bettering herself. She was very anti-drugs – she wouldn’t even take a paracetamol for a headache – but the mushrooms were sold to her as a natural remedy. Rachael was a lovely person and life for both of us was getting back on track. It was cruelly taken from us.”
Back in Invercargill, the whole family is struggling with grief. “Every time I see her face in a photo, it’s like she’s still here,” says Penny. “It’s been a year next month, but for us, it’s a bad dream we all want to wake up from.”
