SUBSIDIARY INDUSTRIES 219 



dairy -products. Not only do Moruya and Coolangatta, 

 where the Berry estate is situated, supply Sydney ; they 

 export hundreds of tons of butter annually to England. 

 A still bigger industry was the offspring of Mort's 

 enterprise. So early as 1843, possessed with the belief 

 that meat could be exported to England, Mort had 

 attempted to cure beef in the ordinary way and then 

 export it. The attempt was necessarily a failure. 

 Towards the end of the sixties or the beginning of the 

 seventies, at Mort's instance and with his financial 

 support, a man of scientific capacity and training, 

 E. D. Nicolle, discovered — he first, not only in Australia, 

 but in the world — a cheap means of producing arti- 

 ficial cold by the repeated use of the same quantity of 

 ammonia. He demonstrated that meat could thus be 

 thoroughly frozen, that its quality was not thereby 

 injured, and that, after being thawed, it kept better 

 than other meat after it was killed. Mort built 

 slaughter-houses in the valley of Lithgow and freezing 

 works at Darling Harbour, in Sydney, at a cost of 

 £80,000, while the squatters of the Colony subscribed 

 £20,000 to export the frozen meat that was to save them 

 and their stations. In 1875 the practical experiment 

 was at length made, and, unfortunately, it issued in 

 heart-breaking failure. But the failure was only 

 temporary. A few years passed, the process was per- 

 fected, and in 1881-2 the first cargoes of frozen meat 

 were despatched from Australia and New Zealand. 

 The writer well remembers the surprise of the captain 

 and officers of an American barque, boarded in mid- 

 South Atlantic, at the sight of the funnel on a meat- 

 carrying saihng-ship in 1882. The funnel marked the 

 successful initiation of the great new source of food- 

 supply that Mort had inaugurated. It was to convey 

 cheap butcher-meat to the masses of the British people, 

 as now even to the United States ; and it rescued from 

 insolvency large numbers of squatters and sheep- 

 owners. 



