People either love them or hate them, regardless of your preference, we are home to some of the best oysters in Australia.

Our region has a long history dating back more than 90 years associated with oyster farming and our pristine waters on the Hastings and Camden Haven River deliver the highest quality oysters for you to enjoy.  

We enjoy them at top-end restaurants, in the backyard on Christmas Day and by the river with our toes in the water.

Before knives, before vinaigrette even, they had to make do smashing oysters over rocks and slurping grey bodies through whatever hole could be cracked, a mouthful of shell all part of the fun.

Here are some things to ponder next time you're getting into your oysters.

R U OK?

The adage you should only eat oysters in months containing the letter "R" has no relevance in Australia.

It's an old American dictum concerning oysters farmed in US coastal waters that may have higher levels of naturally-occurring bacteria between May and August. It's not a problem for commercially farmed bivalves.

t's worth keeping in mind that an oyster's flavour will change throughout the year, though, dependent on its environment and spawning cycle.

Any good kitchen or retailer will rotate oyster suppliers, so customers are always eating the best gear available.

Australia has a lot of coastline and a lot of oyster options.

Roll out the red carpetbag

Carpetbag steak is not a mid-century Australian invention.

As much as we would love to claim it as our own (pavlova, anyone?), the dish of beef fillet stuffed with oysters has its origins in 19th-century America.

How and why it became popular in Australian restaurants at the time Barry Humphries was first donning a frock is uncertain.

What we do know, is that it's a winning combination of surf and turf - the oyster's ancient saltiness bolstering the beef's flavour and creating a perfect umami storm.

If you're going to whip out that Blue Nun you've been cellaring and cook carpetbag steak at home, don't be tempted to use smoked oysters.

Middens are VERY old

Sitting together as a family and sharing oysters is an ancient Australian tradition and middens of oyster shells and other molluscs created by Australia's indigenous communities have been carbon dated to more than 8000 years old.

If oysters be the food of love, play on

"The world is your oyster" makes no sense on the surface. It means "all the world is there for you to enjoy, get stuck in" but where does the phrase come from?

Why not "the world is your guppy fish" or "the world is your Mrs Mac's traveller pie"? Like most weird idioms, the blame lies with Shakespeare.

In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Pistol the trash-talking thief proclaims, "the world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open".

What Pistol was trying to say here, is that he's going to use stabby violence to obtain his riches (in reference to an oyster's pearl).

It makes a bit more sense in context. Actually trying to open an oyster with a sword would be very difficult, but a killer party trick if you could pull it off.

Shuckin' big Willie style

Speaking of Shakespeare, archaeologists have discovered oyster fragments at The Rose Playhouse on London's Southbank dating back to the 16th century. The fragments suggest oysters were a popular theatre snack in Shakespeare's time. Molluscs: the original Malteser.