Stinker’s History: The history of oysters

TO fully realise the significance of the oyster industry you first need to understand the history of the oyster.

Oysters have been on earth far longer than us; they have been present at every turn of human history.

Fossil shells have been found as far back as 230 million years and have been collected for human consumption since the Stone Age.

In their air tight containers, they were brought on voyages of discovery as a supply of fresh food and can be found throughout the world from Norway to the waters near Morocco, Europe, Africa, America, Asia and south to Australia and New Zealand.

Throughout the Greek Period they were greatly appreciated on the table and were even used as a ballot paper.

If the citizens wanted to banish someone from their city they would vote with the top of the oyster shell.

The Romans couldn’t conceive a banquet without oysters which were imported at high cost from Gaul and England. On arrival the oysters were lowered into salt water and fattened with wine and pastries.

The Romans paid for their oysters by their weight in gold as the shellfish was considered a powerful aphrodisiac.

It was a certain Sergius Orata (140-91BC) who first had the idea of organising their breeding.

During the Middle Ages, enormous piles of oyster shells were discovered in France showing that they were largely consumed from the year 900 to 1300AD.

In the 16^th Century oyster meals appeared in Paris where it was expected that each guest would consume around 150.

The 18^th Century saw the birth of oyster farming in Europe, France, Spain and Holland, Ireland and England.

On the American continent the native North American tribes feasted on oysters and used the shells as decorations and money for trade.

They too have ancient shell piles or middens, hundreds and thousands of years in the making.

In his book, “The Big Oyster”, author Mark Kurlansky writes, “Before the 20^th Century, when people thought of New York, they thought of oysters…”.

Biologists estimate that New York Harbour contained half of the world’s oysters – then, with progress, the water was polluted.

In Australia the origins of oysters as a food source goes way back to the first inhabitants.

Being great hunters and gatherers it is not surprising to learn that the oyster was a major part of the diet of coastal Aboriginal communities.

Shell middens along the east coast, some having been carbon dated back to 6,000BC, provide an accurate record of the significance of the oyster.

Charred shells were still being tossed onto middens up until the mid 19^th century suggesting that the local Aboriginal people may have preferred to cook their oysters over the open fire until the shell opened.

Oysters provided far more than food, as the shell, along with the turban shell, could be fashioned into an effective fish hook or cutting tool.

Evidence of the value of the oyster to the local Worimi people, in and around Port Stephens, can be found in all the known sites along the ocean beaches and adjacent to the river systems within the port.

The many islands, both inside and outside the Port, as far north as Broughton Island, bear testimony to thousands of years of oyster gathering.

As it was with Aboriginal people, the sustainability of all natural resources was never threatened, they took what was needed for survival and not one shellfish was wasted.

With the arrival of the First Fleet, this was all about to change.

When the First Fleet settlers arrived in Port Jackson they found their new homeland offered little in the way of edible fruits or berries.

Kangaroos, wombats and koalas were out of the question.

There was no wild game acceptable to 18^th century English palates, with one exception – oysters.

From Governor Captain Arthur Phillip to the soldiers, sailors, and the convicts, all feasted on them.

One of the earliest references to oysters was made by William Bradley of the Royal Navy in his published journal whilst aboard the H.M.S. “Sirius” in Port Jackson in 1788.

“We found fish aplenty although the harbour is full of sharks,” Bradley wrote.

“There is a great quantity of shellfish in the coves that have mud flats, at the bottom the oysters are very large.”

To their delight the early settlers in Port Stephens found the same abundance of the shellfish.

Beautiful, fat oysters were growing wild around the foreshores, in the bays and the mouths of the estuaries – they had been growing for thousands of years and were easily chipped off the rocks and mangrove roots.

In 1922 T.C. Roughley, the noted author and marine authority, stated that all through the Port Stephens seabed west of Snapper Island was one vast oyster bed.

“If in the very early days of our colonisation, you had sailed into Port Stephens in NSW at low tide you would have seen a great harbour fringed with rocks, glistening sandy beaches and large expanses of mud flats bordered with mangroves.

“You would probably have seen more oysters than had ever been seen before, anywhere in the world.

“The rocks everywhere were covered with them.

“On the mud flats they occurred in such dense clusters that you would not have been able to walk there without crushing them with your boots.

“If you had been provided with a glass-bottom boat you would have seen them growing on the bottom in clumps two or three feet deep.

“There were thousands of acres of them.”

Back in Sydney town the food needs of the colonists, from these natural deposits, would have been more than sufficient for many years.

Unfortunately the oysters, in particular their shells, were to become far more valuable in other ways.

By John ‘Stinker’ CLARKE