Nine-year-old's giant pet oyster sells for $400, becomes influencer's lunch

At the Narooma Oyster Festival, Poppy's massive oyster, three years her senior, secured second place, falling just short of veteran farmer Bernie Connell's entry.

Connell's champion oyster, "Pride of the Clyde," took the top spot with an incredible weight of 2.66 kilograms, and while impressive, what happened next still surprises the Yiannaros family.

Poppy and her sister Demi had just returned their oysters, Georgie and Xena, to their family's market stall when a social media influencer, live streaming to her followers overseas, made an unprecedented offer.

"They weren't for sale, but someone wanted to buy it," Poppy's grandfather, Jim Yiannaros, told Bega District News.

"My daughter-in-law said $400, thinking they would say 'Oh well', but sure enough this lady, glammed up, wearing pink and white, said no worries and the cash came out."

The 1.9-kilogram specimen, a sibling to Poppy's runner-up, took five minutes to shuck with a butcher's knife in front of a gathering crowd.

For the Yiannaros family, the spectacle was a lighthearted moment in a legacy that has spanned decades.

Poppy's father, Kosta, had found his daughter earlier in the day rubbing ice on the giant oyster to "keep it cold and hydrated".

"Poppy was just sitting there talking to it like it's a human," Kosta said with a chuckle.

"She said it was looking dry, so she'd make sure to keep putting ice on it and rubbing ice over the top."

The $400 price tag was remarkable, but for grandfather Jim Yiannaros, the real value was watching his grandchildren carry on a trade started by his father, Con, in the 1950s.

Con started shucking in Melbourne before moving to Sydney, where his hard work landed him a role with one of Australia's leading oyster-farming families on the Georges River, moving past the shucking knife to learn the complex trade of oyster farming.

Con eventually saw oyster farms for sale in Batemans Bay and relocated with his wife to a home attached to an oyster shed on the Clyde River.

There, he established Batemans Bay Oysters, a business later taken over by Jim and his twin brother at the age of 15.

"What Poppy is doing is what her dad used to do and what I used to do," Jim said.

"We all started playing in the mud, turning over rocks, chasing crabs, going in and out of boats. All the same stuff."

Poppy agreed and said she enjoyed searching for crabs "outside of the shed, under rocks and dead oysters, in crab traps and stuff", proudly following in her family's footsteps.

While the giant Pacific oysters were the stars of the "comp," the family has farmed the popular and native Sydney Rock oysters all their lives, which take three to four years to reach a marketable 50-gram "plate" size.

However, it was the Pacific variety used in the competition that could reach upwards of 500 grams in just two years or "buffet size" in 10 to 12 months.

When the family received these oysters as "spat" in 2014, they were only 2.2 millimetres long, but after 12 years sitting nestled and protected in a basket at their lease, they had grown significantly.

The influencer who purchased the oyster was not just buying a meal, but, according to the Yiannaros family, it was a bit of their oyster farming history.

"I've opened millions of oysters in my time, but I've never opened an oyster that big. It would have weighed about 1.9 kilograms," Jim said.

Continuing the family trade alongside his career as a Canberran teacher, Kosta runs Roaming Oysters, a mobile shucking service for corporate parties and weddings.

Wearing a signature tool belt with attached buckets, he opens fresh oysters on demand, yet, even with his years of expertise, he said opening the festival's giant Pacific was a standout "show" that differed from his typical event shucking.

"It became quite a show when we did open it. It took a good five minutes and we ended up using a proper butcher's knife to cut it out," Kosta said.

"Big crowds stood around and the people who bought it got the meat and chopped it up, because the meat that comes with it is essentially like a T-bone steak of an oyster. It's huge."

The family's two competition oysters, Georgie and Xena, will return to the Yiannaros' lease and remain submerged in a basket until their next "holiday to the Narooma Oyster Festival".