[2] Historian Harry Stephenson describes him as a "hardy and competent bushman ... a contented man of simple tastes".
[3] His nearest neighbour was Harry Smith, stepson of the original owner of Wonnangatta, with whom Barclay had a good relationship.
English-born John Bamford had lived at Black Snake Creek, 12 miles (19 km) from Talbotville, for twenty years.
Alan King, a stockman, who stayed at Wonnangatta in late December 1917, recalled that Bamford seemed to be on good terms with Barclay.
He briefly searched the area again, stayed the night at the homestead, and left for Dargo the next day to raise the alarm.
Shortly after, Detective Alex McKerral was dispatched from Melbourne, together with Constable Ryan, a native of the Mansfield district.
Wallace Mortimer recounts that the police party found strychnine in the pepper container when they prepared a meal in the homestead on the night of their arrival.
On the return journey, on the Howitt high plains, the police party came across the horse that John Bamford had ridden to Talbotville for the vote.
Jim Barclay's body was handed to his extended family, who lived on the Mornington Peninsula, and he was buried at Tyabb Cemetery.
It is also unlikely he would have knowingly allowed the body of his friend Jim Barclay to lie where the murderer left it and be disturbed by animals for three weeks.
Writing in 1980, Harry Stephenson favoured the theory that Smith "might have had an answer to the mystery" and noted that older cattlemen were still reluctant to discuss the case.
Wallace Mortimer suggests that Barclay and, later, Bamford were perhaps killed by horse thieves, and cites "old timers [who] are adamant in their belief such was the reason".
[4]: 106 The police report refutes that idea, pointing out that the only livestock missing from Wonnangatta was Bamford's horse, which had been recovered on Mount Howitt.
[citation needed] Wallace Mortimer dismisses any significance in the fact that a right shoe and a hat were placed near the crotch of Barclay's body.
According to Mortimer, the idea that it implied a motive for the killing Barclay, a ladies man, by a jealous husband, came from a novelist, "who had obviously done little or no research into the matter".