5th August World Oyster Day

Listening to the radio this morning ,I learned that it is Oyster Day. It is a day to celebrate eating oysters as well as appreciating oysters.

The NSW oyster trail stretches from the Tweed River on the North Coast to Wonboyn Lake on the South Coast. NSW is home to more than 280 oyster farming businesses, spread across 32 coastal estuaries, so we do need to know about it.

I wondered 'if it is oyster day is it also pearl day, but I can't seem to find any reference to Pearl Day, so here I am celebrating both oysters and pearls.  

Contrary to the generally held view that pearls are found by chance in oysters, that is not the case. Most pearls are now produced on pearl farms. almost all are now produced from farms. Australian South Sea pearls are found along the northwest coast of Australia, and this part of the world produces more white South Sea pearls than any other location. Broome is considered to be the pearling capital of the world. In the 1880s pearlers turned their sights toRoebuck Bay (Broome) in the West Kimberley. By 1910 Broome was the largest pearling centre in the world.

I didn't think there would be many picture books about pearls and probably even less about oysters. I could think of Going for Oysters  and Molly Idle's Pearl, but when I started to look I remembered that there is a parable in the bible about a pearl and that the idiom, 'the world is my oyster' is often explained in picture book format. This metaphor simply 'means that everything is open to one, and if one is lucky they could encounter something special. The metaphor that informs the saying is that if you have an oyster there is a chance that there may be a pearl in it.'

Have fun reading some of these:

And if you can't find any of these, there's always lots of books in the library whose main character is named 'Pearl' !