AT the end of a narrow dirt road at Lemon Tree Passage, a row of tin oyster-farm sheds sits on the banks of picturesque Tilligerry Creek.
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On a perfect spring day, the still waters belie the tumult in the Port Stephens oyster industry, as the Environment Protection Authority battles criticism over its handling of a toxic chemical leak from RAAF Williamtown into the Tilligerry state conservation area.
Eyeing the estuary, Matt Burgoyne, co-director of award-winning business XL Oysters, says his company will see out the storm but fears for the livelihood of others.
A temporary ban has been placed on oyster farming around the Tilligerry peninsula and residents near the base have been warned not to drink bore water and not to eat fish caught nearby or eggs from backyard chickens.
Mr Burgoyne, who runs XL Oysters with his uncle, Mark Salm, said farmers were currently banned from selling stock but were allowed to move them around during prime spring growth.
XL has stock further down the estuary as well as at Tweed Heads, which Mr Burgoyne says will ensure its operations beyond Christmas, when he hopes the issue will be resolved.
But he said other oyster farmers, particularly those who grew Pacific oysters and had seen their crops “decimated” over the past two years, may not be so lucky.
“For some of these guys, just 15 weeks out from Christmas ... they want to be able to be getting oysters ready for sale,” he said.
“If this doesn’t clear up, some of them have taken too many hits and they will go under.”
Mr Burgoyne, the third-generation member of the near 60-year-old family business, said his company’s biggest problem was overcatch and the associated waste. During busy periods his business has to remove at least one cubic metre of dead oyster shells per week. These are oysters that may not have grown, have died due to a lack of food or attacks from birds and parasites, or have fallen victim to the environment. Mr Burgoyne’s grandfather, Adrian Salm, was a mussel and oyster farmer in the Netherlands before immigrating to Australia after World War II.
Initially, he ran a business with fellow Dutchman John Padmos, whose family would later set up Terrace Boating in Raymond Terrace.
Mr Salm went out on his own with his youngest son Mark and his daughter’s husband Don – Matt’s father – joining him.
‘‘XL came about when Opa retired and gave his four children a share, then Mark and Dad took things over,” Mr Burgoyne says.
As its name suggests, XL specialises in growing extra-large Sydney rock oysters, which it sells wholesale to restaurants and suppliers.
The company tried growing the faster Pacific oystersbut they also became like a bit of a weed, catching on all your oysters, Mr Burgoyne said.
Eight years ago, XL decided to only grow Sydney rock oysters and has increasingly become aware that its viability and future is inextricably linked to the health of the estuarine environment in which it farms.
“This has led to decades of proactive involvement in environmental management, protection and remediation efforts at many levels of government and in the community at large,” Mr Burgoyne says.
The company recently won the excellence in environmental practice category at the Sydney Fish Market Seafood Excellence Awards.
For years XL used the traditional wild-caught harvesting method, catching oysters that attached to sunken apparatus before scraping them off and breeding them for the average two-and-a-half years to full growth. But with natural selection, part of the crops would always die or not grow, so the company started buying its young stock from a hatchery.
‘‘The hatchery have been breeding in disease resistance and fast growth – with natural [caught] oysters it can take nearly three years to get to plates, whereas we can knock nearly a year off that,” he says.
Placing the hatch oysters in baskets, the XL team monitors them for the first six months, ensuring they spend half their time in the water and out. It uses plastic apparatus after abandoning the traditional oyster sticks, made from wood and coated in coal tar to discourage aquatic borers.
With 32-hectare oyster leases, XL sells about 100,000 dozen oysters each year – a dozen retail for $9.50 to suppliers who again double the price for restaurants who price them at about $40.
Mark Salm and Matt’s father, Don, have played a leading role in catchment management and Mr Burgoyne initially took water samples before the industry opted to employ an independent sampler.
“If the estuary is healthy, our business is healthy and our bank account is healthy,” he says.
He says it is time other industries who use the waterways, particularly tourism, play a more active role in maintaining the vital estuary.
With two young sons, there is hope the family business will be around for some time yet.
“I’ll probably tell them to study hard like my father told me, but they can always come and grow oysters,” he smiles.
