World is his oyster...Daniel Campbell lifts and sorts oysters on the family farm at Tuross Lakes. Photo: Kate Geraghty

By DEBRA JOPSON
January 12, 2010 They are the farmers who play god to the oysters which feed Sydney. In Tuross Lake there are no longer natural tides since the big dry closed the nearby river entrance to the sea last year, so Graeme Campbell and his son Daniel replicate the flow which keeps their stock of rock oysters alive. ”If you leave them under water they will die, so we have had to come up with this system of raising the trays,” Mr Campbell said. As they chug around their 10 hectares of leases in a metal punt, they manually lift the racks to sun and air them. ”Normally you don’t have to do this as an oyster farmer. That’s why we’ve all got bad backs.” The men also cart oysters to Narooma for a spell of real tidal wash, but this is hard work which has forced the Campbells to cut the number of oysters they grow and has driven some from the industry. ”We have had to destock, so we produce about 50 per cent of the oysters we could produce.” They supply the city with 200 to 300 bags a year. Each bag holds 50 dozen plate-sized premium oysters, 65 kilograms of bistro size, or 75 kilograms of smaller creatures destined for bottling. The aim is to produce as many of the big ones as possible, which they can sell for between $8.50 and $9 a dozen. In a normal year, the Campbells could produce 300 to 350 bags of the best. Mr Campbell boasts that Tuross Lake has no pollution sources and he is grateful it escaped the QX virus which nearly wiped out the industry further north. But to recover, they need a flood, like those of 1991 and 1992, which covered the floor of the shed by about a metre. For that they need rain ”of biblical proportions”. Then it would take four years to get back to full production. …

Oyster farming a mere shell of its former self