World’s their oyster
ACCORDING to Wiki, oysters are Viagra in a shell. This is because they are overloaded with zinc. This helps the body produce testosterone, “a hormone critical in regulating women’s and men’s libido and sexual function”. John Collison, who has spent most of his life farming the randy bivalves, said oysters were “sex machines” that will spawn anywhere, anytime, anyhow. “You can have them in the boat and one will spawn and then they will all start,” he said. “You have to put them back in the water when that happens.” He said oyster meat was itself the combined mass of 30 million or so eggs that oysters produce. He said that biting into an oyster was like biting into “microscopic caviar”. BOWEN- based trailblazers John and Annette Collison are well on their way to establishing a North Australian oyster industry.
There are no commercial oyster farms in Northern Australia, but Mr and Mrs Collison have already proved at their lease in oceanic waters between Bowen and Abbot Point that oysters can be farmed on a commercial basis in northern waters.
Mr and Mrs Collison are farming saccostrea echinata, otherwise known as the native Australian tropical oyster. Commonly it is known as the black lip oyster.
These are the native oysters found around the northern Australian coastline and the Papua New Guinea coast.
Mr and Mrs Collison farmed Sydney rock and Pacific oysters in the Shoalhaven- Crookhaven River system in NSW for 32 years before moving to Bowen, ostensibly to retire in 2014.
Mr Collison, however, already had the oyster bug. The previous year he had seen black lip oysters on the seabed while out in a boat just off Bowen with his son, Nathan.
Retirement plans then went overboard. They were going back into the oyster business but this time it would be as pathfinders.
If they could prove that oysters could be farmed on a large commercial scale in tropical waters, they would pave the way for others to follow.
Now they have proved beyond doubt that black lip oysters can be grown commercially in pristine North Queensland waters.
“We applied for a lease in 2013 and started farming in 2014,” Mrs Collison said.
Mr Collison said they sunk their superannuation into the project and did not receive LEADING WAY: Bowen's John and Annette Collison are building the foundations for a North Australian oyster industry. any government funding.
“We now have the first commercial black lip oyster farm in Australia,” he said.
“Queensland does not have an oyster industry.
“All of the oysters that are sold in Queensland come from South Australia, Tasmania or New Zealand.”
For the last two years the Collisons have sold their harvested oysters to Bowen seafood operator Terry Must of Arabon Seafoods and to Ingham Road Seafood in Townsville.
“We harvested one thousand dozen last year,” he said.
“We hope to get production well up on this, but really the sky is the limit.
“We will be increasing our production.”
Mr Collison said they were trying to secure another oyster lease near the present site to expand their operation.
Mrs Collison said they hoped that once it became known that black lips could be farmed in commercial quantities, other farmers would follow.
“If there were more farmers it would create the need for someone to establish an oyster hatchery in the North,” she said.
Mr Collison said having a hatchery which supplied spats or juvenile oysters to farmers would streamline the production process.