National Lamb Day is back at Totara Estate
Save the date! On Sunday 15 February the home of Aotearoa New Zealand's first international shipment of sheep and frozen meat will celebrate National Lamb Day.
Did you know that in the 1880s, Totara Estate helped to transform global food production and Aotearoa New Zealand's economy thanks to the first shipment of frozen meat?
National Lamb Day is the anniversary of the day the ship Dunedin left Port Chalmers for London in 1882 carrying the first shipment of sheep and frozen meat from Aotearoa New Zealand to England.
The celebration at Totara Estate offers a lot more than just a nice locally farmed lamb burger - you can check out heritage agricultural demos such as blade shearing, dry stone wall building and wool spinning - you can even give spinning a try yourself! Then you can kick back with the aforementioned burger and enjoy live music by local Ōamaru talent.
The backstory
On 15 February 1882, that first boatload carried 4,311 sheep and 598 carcasses, all farmed at Totara Estate. The journey to London's historic Smithfield meat market took 98 days - only possibly due to the ingenious development of refrigeration.
The importance of this new technology to Aotearoa was best encapsulated by the then governor-general Sir David Beattie at the Totara Estate centenary where he said, “in the long run, refrigeration brought prosperity. It helped to pay for New Zealand as we have known it, for our social order, our way of life, our security. All this happened because people of vision saw possibilities and made them work”.
By 1892, 10 years after the Dunedin’s first voyage, 21 freezing works were in operation, exporting 2 million sheep and lamb carcasses worth more than £1 million a year.
Totara Estate was established in the 1850s and known for its sheep, cattle and grain. Today, visitors to Totara Estate can wander through the men’s quarters, stables, granary, cookhouse and slaughterhouse, where displays recollect farm and domestic life on the estate during Victorian times. You can join in with farm activities, enjoy freshly baked scones, feed the sheep, and play old-fashioned games. For a wider view of the countryside, scale Sebastopol Hill to the base of the monument erected in memory of Superintendent of the New Zealand Australia Land Company, Thomas Brydone.
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