Who on earth is Thomas Mort?

If your passion and your profession are intertwined, remind yourself of how lucky you are. It’s not the case for most of us. Which is not to say one doesn't love one’s job. It’s just that property value graphs and rental vacancy stats, for instance, don’t occupy this one’s Sundays or dinner table conversations. 

Unexpectedly, today, my professional and my passion coincided.They were brought together right in the heart of Sydney’s eastern suburbs. 

You see, my company has listed this big old (c.1840) mansion in Sydney’s east. Some say it’s worth $25million and is the most extraordinary home ever built in Australia. The nobly named “Bishopscourt” in Darling Point, is the talk of the town in Sydney’s media and Australia’s real estate community at the moment. Google it. It’s rather spectacular and has a notable religious history - housing seven of Sydney’s Archbishops. (I should clarify here that my passion is not Anglican religious history). 

Upon discussing the listing with my superiors, I noticeably disappointed my company’s joint-chairman when I responded blankly to the name of the home’s original owner, Thomas Sutcliffe Mort (of Goldsbrough Mort & Co). There will be many of you who’ll groan right now, not unlike my chairman did, at the idea that someone passionate about rural Australia could be unaware of the name Thomas Mort. The conversation went a little like this. “The original owner of this home was Thomas Mort,” Brian White, the chairman of Ray White, said. Silence ensues. “You do know who Thomas Mort is?...... Aren’t you a country girl? ...... How young are you?”

Situated on 6,216 square metres, the home Ray White Double Bay is selling was the original Sydney homestead for one of the most successful and famous of early pastoralists. This Mr Mort. 

Who’d have thunk: real estate and rural heritage, profession and passion, together as one. 

“Visiting the home and seeing his vision - when the home was being planned right back in the mid 1800's - revealed just how powerful pastoralists were in the whole Australian economy,” he told me. 

For those on the same side of ignorance-avenue as I (and I was relieved to discover the rest of the marketing and media teams - even the country ones - were as clueless as me), here’s a bit of a history lesson: Thomas Mort moved to Australia in 1838 and started a wool-broking company. The next decade he purchased 38,000 acres at the mouth of the Tuross River. He cleared the land and drained the swamps, erected fences, sowed grasses, installed milking sheds and eventually produced butter and cheese for sale in Sydney. 

The next decade, at a time when only (unpopular) salted meats and meat by-products could be transported he established an abattoir that, uniquely, included a refrigeration system for the export of meat in Australia’s warm climate. Australian meat could now, potentially, reach Europe and America. 

To celebrate the milestone of actually freezing meat for later consumption, he invited 300 people by train to Lithgow to enjoy a mighty meaty picnic featuring meat that had been frozen for a year-and-a-half. Whilst he endured many hiccups in his frozen-meat-export plans over several years he eventually became the man responsible for the first refrigerated meat works in the world. It was based in Darling Harbour and successfully delivered Australian meat to the UK in 1868. 

Now the talk of the office is this extraordinary fellow, Thomas Mort, whom we’ve only just met. And we get to sell his home...