The water around Sandfly Alley is a patchwork of floating pontoons and anchored trays where tens of thousands of oysters are fattening, gobbling up algae.
The street is just north of Port Macquarie in northern New South Wales. There are 13 oyster farms along the dirt road that runs parallel to the pristine Limeburners Creek, an offshoot of the Hastings River. David Tunstead has the first and perhaps oldest shed on the street – the tin walls, on timber stilts, lean into the estuary. The shed was built 80 years ago out of native prickly tea tree, so it would be resistant to wood-borers.
“I’m doing OK,” Tunstead says, “but many oyster farmers are still struggling.”
Oyster sales in Australia crashed in March, when the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Traditionally three-quarters of oysters in this country are eaten in pubs and restaurants, but fear and then lockdowns kept patrons at home.
“We’ve had to encourage people to eat more oysters at home,” Tunstead says.
In a normal year, he would shift between 30,000 to 50,000 dozen oysters, but all his sales stopped during the first national lockdown. Now his oysters are selling well from his shed door and in fish shops again, though demand is uneven nationally.
But there’s one area that shows significant promise. After signing with a gourmet, online fresh food delivery company, Tunstead’s sales of unopened (or “shuck your own”) oysters have skyrocketed.
From Tunstead’s perspective, it’s a better way to eat them. “Pre-opened are great for Kilpatrick and if you put sauce and seasoning on them. But if you are a choice-oyster eater, the only way is open them yourself and eat them straight away.”
On top of tasting fresher, closed oysters have another advantage: they’re about $5 cheaper a dozen than shucked oysters. Because closed oysters are classified as a fresh food, there’s no GST on them, whereas shucked oysters are taxable. From the shed door, closed oysters are now selling at around $15 to $20 a dozen, whereas shucked oysters are closer to $20 to $25.
But with those rewards comes significant risk. “Don’t use a screwdriver to open them, rule number one, because that will guarantee you a couple of stitches,” says Paul Wilson, who chairs the Hastings River oyster growers’ branch of the NSW Farmers Association.
Wilson says the move to shucking your own oysters is part of a broader “fine-dining in the home” movement. The change, encouraged by the state and national farmers’ federations, could help safeguard Australian food producers against any future hospitality shutdowns. With unshucked oysters, Wilson says, “you get to enjoy the natural juices in the oyster before it’s washed commercially”.
David Saunders, from Port Macquarie’s Holiday Oyster company, has been promoting unopened oysters at farmers’ markets. “People are, at first, a bit afraid, and if you want to be quick about it, it is a difficult thing. But if you take your time, opening an oyster is not hard. I just show people and talk about it … I’ve sold a lot of shucking knives lately.”
The Australian oyster industry is valued at about $100m a year and Port Macquarie farmers’ Pacific oyster contribution is worth some $10m of that total. Though heavy spring rains closed estuaries further south in the state in October, benefiting the Port Macquarie farmers, their plans to begin exports to China this year have been shelved.
Port Macquarie farmers say the Australian market will not return to pre-pandemic levels until state borders open and tourism returns, as oysters are still largely perceived as a dine-out luxury or holiday item. That leaves producers – and consumers – with a lot of extra oysters.
A fifth-generation oyster farmer, Tunstead’s knife can pop open the gnarly husk of an oyster to reveal a plump nugget of flesh in seconds.
“It’s a first kiss of salt, then you get a creamy, buttery tang at the back of your throat that leaves you wanting more,” he says of a high-quality oyster. “Obviously there is still demand for the processed – that’s my bread and butter, I won’t speak bad of them – but the shift is towards fresher oysters and the freshest oyster you can have is a closed oyster.”
