Mort's vision for Bodalla was as a country estate to retire on and to demonstrate model land utilisation and rural settlement.

Mort offered shares to his employees and in 1875, the company was incorporated with limited liability having been managed beforehand by a committee that included four leading hands.

This was one of the earliest attempts at co-operation between capital and labour in Australia, and although the effort at sharing ownership was only partially successful, Mort always had good relations with his employees.

Also in the mid-1860s, Mort had been looking at refrigeration as a way of developing manufacturing orders, to ensure better access to the Sydney market for the butter and cheese he was producing at Bodalla and to offset the vulnerability of being exposed to falling wool prices.

Mort financed experiments by Eugene Dominic Nicolle, a French born engineer who had arrived in Sydney in 1853 and registered his first ice-making patent in 1861.

In 1861 Mort established at Darling Harbour the first freezing works in the world, which afterwards became the New South Wales Fresh Food and Ice Company.

[1] Sir Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, using the technology developed by another new Australian, French immigrant Eugene Nicolle (who dissolved ammonia in water to reach a temperature of -20 °C in a sealed room) in Balmain built the first freezerworks.

This was consequently reported in the Sydney Morning Herald and helped to trigger demand for frozen meats and other primary produce, first to the rural population thence to Britain and, eventually, the world.

From Thomas Mort's peroration at the inaugural lunch on 2 September 1875, at which 300 persons attended including Sir John Hay, the Hon.

Yes, gentlemen, I now say that the time has arrived — at all events, is not far distant — when the various portions of the Earth will each give forth their products for the use of each and of all; that the over-abundance of one country will make up for the deficiency of another; the superabundance of the year of plenty serving for the scant harvest of its successor; for cold arrests all change.

It is, however, as I have just stated, within the power of man to adjust these things, and I hope you will all join with me in believing that the first grand step towards the accomplishment of this great deed is in that of which you yourselves have this day been partakers and witnesses.

Within a week, a meeting of working men in Sydney had resolved to show their esteem; a sculpture in Macquarie Place by Pierce Connolly was unveiled in 1883.

[14] His house in Darling Point which he called Greenoaks became the home of the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney on 24 October 1910 and was renamed Bishopscourt.