1877
A Coolgardie Safe
Cool things
This Coolgardie Safe is probably homemade, but it accords with the basic principles of a galvanised-iron frame supporting two doors and some internal shelves. On top was a tray of water and on the sides were hessian sheets soaked in water. The safe was placed in a breeze and the evaporating water cooled its inside. The legs were often placed in a tray of water to keep ants at bay.
Keeping things cool was one of the first and most important tasks of white settlement in Australia. The tyranny of distance was especially acute if you were in the meat business, and the first person to really address the issue was Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, an auctioneer, dairy farmer, woolgrower and cattleman, in the 1840s. He transported meat from his Lithgow abattoir to Sydney, where it was kept in the world’s first refrigeration works. His use of refrigeration allowed him to transport milk and dairy products around New South Wales and maximise markets for his Bodalla dairy-farm produce.
Mort, a devout Anglican, saw his divine quest as taking Australian meat to the world. He announced to the Sydney Chamber of Commerce in 1870: ‘Climate, seasons, plenty, scarcity, distance, will all shake hands, and out of the commingling will come enough for all, for the Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.’ Tragically, a burst pipe on his ship The Northam ruined his first funded venture in 1877, and he died the next year.
Refrigeration was a hot topic at the time throughout the world. French scientists and traders experimented with importing meat from South America and in 1877 the steamship Paraguay brought 80 tonnes of meat from Buenos Aires – but it was a one-off event. Bell and Coleman of Glasgow eventually devised a reliable, efficient air compression/expansion refrigeration system.
Queensland grazier Thomas McIlwraith and his partners chartered the Strathleven and had Bell-Coleman machinery fitted. The ship left Melbourne on 6 December 1879 with 40 tonnes of meat, which was delivered deliciously to London on 2 February 1880. Within three years, eight ships had been fitted with refrigeration equipment and the trade was off and running.
Living on a hot, dry continent, Australians loved refrigeration. On the West Australian goldfields, where the temperatures ran into the 40s and grocery shops were 180 kilometres away, Arthur Patrick McCormick noticed that the evaporation of a wet bag cooled any object underneath, especially when the bag was placed in a breeze. From there he developed the Coolgardie Safe. By the early 20th century, the safes were ubiquitous, usually set on verandas to catch the breeze.
J M Larsen produced the first domestic refrigerator in America in 1913. In Australia, the first domestically designed and manufactured refrigerators were made by Edward Hallstrom. His first model, developed in 1928, was called the Icy Ball and was powered by kerosene.
Hallstrom, who as a hobby collected the hats of famous people (including Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower), developed an upright model in 1935 – the Silent Knight – which was first powered by gas and later by electricity.
According to the Powerhouse Museum, the first icebox sold under the trademark Esky was manufactured by Malley’s, a refrigeration business based in Sydney, in 1884. In 1952 Malley’s launched the first portable Esky (short for ‘eskimo’) cooler in the world, calling it the Esky Auto Ice Box. The cooler kept its contents chilled with two layers: a polypropylene outer shell and a polyurethane inner layer (originally cork). The cooler was steel and finished in baked enamel and chrome. Later versions have been made with plastic.
The Esky was marketed to motorists and the aim was to have it – like a jack and jumper leads – as standard in every family car. It symbolised a carefree, open-road lifestyle where a cold beer was always to hand.