At almost 3kg, 'Jill' is Australia's biggest oyster

Weighing in at 2.74kg, Jill from Lennoc Oysters, Batemans Bay was awarded the national title at the Narooma Oyster Festival on May 6.

Farmer Bernie Connell said Jill was the size of a matchstick head when he purchased her as a spat from a hatchery in Tasmania.

The third-generation oyster farmer purchases thousands and thousands of oyster spat each year, mostly for commercial farming.

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"Out of every 30,000 to 40,000 oysters there's one that grows twice as fast," Mr Connell said.

He puts those aside, adopting them as a pet to be nurtured and grown to their maximum potential.

Mr Connell knows a thing or two about helping oysters flourish. His oyster Jack was the inaugural winner of the competition at the Oyster Festival and unsuccessfully challenged for the Guinness World Record in 2018. Sadly an influx of fresh water into the Clyde River during a season of flooding in 2019 changed the salinity of the water and killed Jack.

However, Jack and Jill were both purchased as spat in 2014, what Mr Connell called "a good year" for oysters, and he jokes that Jill is Jack's wife. Mr Connell hopes she will one day grow to be bigger than her predecessor.

Jill finished second at the competition in 2022, equal in weight but shorter by one centimetre, to 'Uncle Ray'.

Mr Connell said Jill could keep on growing and growing. He keeps her in a secret spot nestled with "plenty of pristine Clyde River water," he said and hopes she will add 400 to 500 grams to her weight before the 2024 competition.

In 2022 he did misplace Jill, and had to spend hours searching around for where she was. Now her location is kept a closely-guarded secret, with an online pin dropped on her location at all times.