National Lamb Day

[1] The first National Lamb Day was celebrated on 15 February, to commemorate the day in 1882 that William Davidson and Thomas Brydone launched the first shipment of frozen sheep meat from Port Chalmers, Otago, New Zealand on the Dunedin, bound for London.

[4] The Dunedin’s voyage was organized by William Soltau Davidson, the British-based general manager of the New Zealand and Australian Land Company, whose landholdings in the two countries exceeded 1 million hectares.

Davidson had taken an interest in refrigerated experiments, which had proved the concept, if not yet the economic viability, of shipping frozen meat around the globe.

On arrival in London on 24 May, only one carcass had to be condemned, and the cargo's superiority over Australian shipments was remarked upon.

[5] The new technology ultimately enabled the owner-operated (family) farm to become the standard economic unit in rural New Zealand for the next century.