Queen Victoria ate thawed Australian lamb thanks in part to one of the great unsung heroes of Australia, James Harrison. Harrison's role as a printer, it turned out, was crucial. Metal type needed regular cleaning with sulphuric ether. Scrubbing away, Harrison noticed that ice crystals formed when he blew on the raised letters. By this time he was working on the Geelong Advertiser. A few kilometres from town, he located a large cave, close to the Barwon River. After some occasionally explosive experiments, he perfected his machine: one that could make commercial quantities of ice. Others were involved in the early years of refrigeration, but it's Harrison who is often given the tag "the father of refrigeration". Granted a British patent in 1856, he was soon selling his machine around the world. I wanted to know more. For instance: is there something to commemorate Harrison on the banks of the Barwon? Is the cave still there?

Just as my interest was piqued, I received an invitation to the annual writer's festival in Geelong. I accepted, wondering if there were any locals who were similarly obsessed with James Harrison? Yes, oh yes. So, this is how I came to spend last Sunday on the banks of the Barwon River in the company of a retired Geelong solicitor, Graham Hobbs, and his mate Daryl McLure, for 21 years the editor of Harrison's old newspaper. Both are aghast that Harrison's story is not better known. Along with others, they spent years trying to build a museum on this spot – gathering the industrial remnants of Harrison's experiments, lobbying for funds, commissioning architect drawings. Catch 22: because Harrison was not already famous, no one wanted to fund the work that might make him so. What's here? Just a patch of grass, stretched out between a low, basalt cliff and the wide, slow river. Oh, and a tiny plaque, erected by the museum committee: "This is the site where James Harrison invented the world's first ice making machine at Rocky Point, Geelong, 1854. Plaque donated by The Packaged Ice Association of Australia."

So, at least the Packaged Ice Association gets it. But the cave? Where's the cave? "Not sure", says Graham. "It was filled in," adds Daryl, "maybe 50 years ago." Surely we can find the entrance? And so we set to work – two local blokes in their 70s, and a visiting Sydneysider, one who has himself seen better days, scrabbling through the thick bracken at the base of the cliff. If this were any other country, this wouldn't be happening. You couldn't, on a pleasant Sunday morning, search for the spot where Marie Curie uncovered radioactivity or where Watson and Crick identified the double helix. It's only our national indifference that makes the next moment possible. We find the cave.

Well, the entrance to it. Hidden in the grass, we uncover some loose boards and plugs of old concrete. There's a dark, beckoning slot. It's hard to tell if it's the whole cave that's been pumped full of concrete, or just the entrance. I have an urge to start digging. I half-expect to find Harrison in there, still experimenting. If only. The real end to his story is downbeat. In the early 1870s, Harrison invested all his funds in an historic first: an attempt to take frozen Australian meat to Britain. On the 34th day, halfway to London, the refrigeration broke down. All 20 tons of meat had to be thrown overboard. Harrison arrived in Britain, meatless and mirthless, a broken man. Not long after, a different team, using a slightly different method of refrigeration, pulled it off: Queen Victoria, no less, sat down to eat a thawed piece of Australian lamb. Harrison missed out on any mention. That afternoon, we drive out to the salt pans on the edge of Geelong. This is where a bankrupt Harrison ended his days, living in a little cottage at the end of "a sodden and treacherous road", to quote an account of the time, living on food parcels delivered by a kindly niece.

We look out over the flat country, Graham and Daryl squinting against the afternoon sun. "Every time you open a fridge," Graham says to no one in particular, "you should say thank you to James Harrison."