At around 4.40pm that day neighbours reported seeing smoke coming from the department of housing property on Anderson Street with Hawke seen moments later walking out of the house while it was going up in flames.

“She said, ‘my babies are in there’, with her hands thrown up,” prosecutor Justin Whalley SC told the court.

“She said, ‘he’s taken everything from me’, ‘my babies, my babies’.”

Whalley told the court some witnesses recalled seeing Hawke looking manic, pacing backwards and forwards past the house, while others said she looked dazed.

She was also seen talking to herself, saying, “see, it’s your fault” and looking back at the burning house saying, “my babies, you don’t have to suffer anymore”.

During a police interview shortly after the fire, Hawke admitted she killed the children.

“I don’t know why I did what I did. Maybe to stop the pain in all of us,” she said.

Whalley said the interview had to be stopped when she started violently banging her head against the wall.

Later medical assessments showed Hawke was suffering from a complex traumatic stress disorder.

“Her life was one of dysfunction and difficulty,” Waldon said, quoting a psychiatric report.

“She suffered persistent and extreme financial stress and drug use and her early life was marked by trauma. This affected her brain development affecting her decision making.

“As an adult she had a limited ability to function … and bond properly with her children.”

Waldon said Hawke turned to drugs and alcohol to cope.

“She was shouldering the financial and emotional burden of her children alone,” she said.

“She had a newborn baby with indication of postnatal depression.”

The court was told the Anderson Street house where the children died would be demolished to make way for a community garden.

Hawke will be sentenced next Friday after Justice Michael Lundberg takes the week to read through the evidence.

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