Oysters hit the screen

For the past year Kim Beamish has been visiting Merimbula to film close to 300 hours of footage for his upcoming documentary, Oyster, featuring the Boyton family who own and run Merimbula Gourmet Oysters. 

Mr Beamish - who has been a film maker for around 15 years and won numerous awards nationally and internationally - said he plans to tell the story of climate change from the perspective of the people who are most affected. 

“Rather than bombarding the audience with facts and figures, Oyster will present its audience with a story, a landscape, an environment and will follow the Boytons as they face practical, ethical and personal decisions about things that matter to them,” Mr Beamish said. 

“The documentary will show them feeding their family, getting the boys to school, running the farm and figuring out whether to ramp up production to sell their oysters into the international market.”

Merimbula Lake oyster farmer and mother-of-two Pip Boyton said it has been a challenge adjusting to having a camera following her around. 

“Agreeing to be in this documentary wasn’t something we took lightly,” Ms Boyton said. “It does make us very vulnerable but I think the message outweighs the awkwardness.”

Ms Boyton and her family, including her husband Dom, are passionate about preventing climate change and ensuring the aquaculture industry is sustainable. 

“We need to focus on looking after our waterways, we live in a pristine environment and its our job to maintain it for future generations,” she said. 

Despite living in Canberra, Mr Beamish is spending as much time on the Far South Coast as he can in order to finish filming, which he hopes will wrap up this summer. 

From there it will be into the editing studio to cut down the footage to an hour and a half documentary which Mr Beamish hopes to screen at various film festivals late next year. 

In order to fund the documentary, Mr Beamish is organising a number or different fundraisers. For more information on Oyster, the film and to keep up with the fundraising plans see www.oysterfilm.com.