Walcha murder trial: defence begins closing statements in Natasha Beth Darcy's trial for murder of Mathew Dunbar

And searches relating to mushrooms could have related to checking on edible fungi around the rural property, Natasha Beth Darcy's barrister told the NSW Supreme Court jury on Tuesday.

The 46-year-old has denied sedating and gassing her sheep farmer partner Mathew Dunbar, who was found dead on his Pandora property in Walcha on August 2, 2017.

She contends the 42-year-old killed himself, but the Crown has rejected her guilty plea to aiding or abetting suicide alleging his death was murder motivated by inheriting his $3.5 million property.

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Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield has suggested Darcy started looking for ways to murder Mr Dunbar by poison in February 2017, citing searches on her iPhone and on a computer.

But in her closing address to the jury, Darcy's barrister Janet Manuell SC asked if that was the only reasonable inference to be made from the searches on mushrooms and redback spiders.

She also questioned whether other people in the household could have made the searches.

Darcy had only been living at the property for about three or four months in February 2017.

"Were there lots of redback spiders around the property?" Ms Manuell asked.

"Were there spiders in the house, the usual creepy crawlies?"

The barrister asked why Darcy and the other householders wouldn't want to know more about what they were seeing.

Referring to mushroom searches, she suggested they were checking on fungi they could not eat.

"When's mushroom season around Walcha?."

She reminded the jury the prosecution needed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.

"Because things might looks suspicious when you first see them, but is there any other reasonable explanation for the evidence you have heard?"

She said the Crown needed to exclude as a reasonable possibility that Mr Dunbar died by his own hand.

"If you think there is a reasonable possibility that he did die by his own hand, committed suicide, then the Crown cannot satisfy you of the elements of murder beyond a reasonable doubt," Ms Manuell told the jury.

She went through Mr Dunbar's history of being adopted, of working alone with his father on the farm until his father died, being estranged from his mother and the effect on him of the suicide death of a close friend in April 2017.

She also rejected the Crown contention that Darcy had been spending all her partner's money.

"We say she wasn't," she said.

Ms Manuell is continuing her address.

Australian Associated Press

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