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The Merimbula Oyster Festival Monument (see Photograph 2.1) is a cement-rendered fibreglass replica of an oyster 93cm tall and 72cm wide. It is set in a concrete block that sits on the ground and is chained to a gum tree adjacent to the Visitor Information Centre in Beach Street (see Map 7.1).
The monument was moved to its present position in July 2013. It had previously been situated against the southern exterior wall of the Visitor Information Centre, to which it was also attached with a chain.
It would seem that the move was made to allow for advertising signs to be placed on the wall.
This was the latest in a number of moves that the monument has undergone during its forty-year history.
2.1 Merimbula Oyster Festival Monument.[18]
The text on the plaque of the monument (see Photograph 2.2) reads:
THIS OYSTER WAS DONATED TO THE COMMUNITY OF MERIMBULA BY THE MERIMBULA OYSTER FESTIVAL
COMMITTEE OF 1979 MERIMBULA’S FIRST OYSTER FESTIVAL.
GLENN COX, CON DE ZWART
KATH DELAHEY, FRANK LANGENHORST
SUE FANE, GREG WALLASTON (sic)
KEN WALTON, HOWARD WAKELING
IT IS A GENUINE COPY OF A MERIMBULA OYSTER. THE SUPERB NATURAL OYSTERS GROWN IN THE MERIMBULA LAKE.
THE OYSTER IS A LIVING BREATHING ANIMAL – A MOLLUSC OR SHELLFISH INHABITING SALT WATER IN THE
LITTORAL OR “BETWEEN - TIDE” AREAS OF THE SEA.
2.2 Plaque on Merimbula Oyster Festival Monument.[19]
The monument was unveiled as the ‘world’s largest oyster’ at the official opening of the 1979 Merimbula Oyster Festival.[20] It later acquired the name ‘Merv’ and became known as ‘Merv the World’s Largest Oyster’.[21]
The monument is not mentioned in any published local history accounts of Merimbula and, at the time of my research, was not mentioned in any publications that list specific monuments.[22] It is now listed on the Monument Australia website.[23]
The only other oyster monuments would seem to be those at Taree NSW and Ceduna SA. These were unveiled in 1990 and 1992 respectively, some considerable time after Merimbula’s monument.[24] The Merimbula oyster monument was not one of the monuments that had information about them supplied to the coordinator of the Australian Bicentennial Authority-sponsored project to record Australia’s unusual monuments.[25]
Lionel A. Gilbert and William P. Driscoll, in their book History Around Us: An Enquiry Approach to Local History, explained that the word monument is derived from the Latin monumentum meaning ‘that which preserves the remembrance of something’, and observed that man has always considered that some people, places or events are worth remembering.[26] As the philosopher Arthur C. Danto said, ‘We erect monuments so that we shall always remember, and build memorials so that we shall never forget’.[27]
The construction of monuments in Australia has, according to Chilla Bulbeck’s article in the Journal of Australian Studies, moved from commemorating the deeds that won the nation to the exploits of ordinary men and women and the history of local communities.[28] Bulbeck also commented in the journal Heritage Australia that local groups with limited resources are often the ones that produce our unusual monuments.[29] Merimbula’s Oyster Festival Monument is most certainly a monument to which Bulbeck’s observations could be applied.
As Robert S. Nelson and Margaret Olin point out in their book Monuments and Memory, Made and Unmade, monuments satisfy the desire to commemorate, to represent the past to the present and the future.[30] Describing the commemorative function of monuments in the book The Art of Forgetting, Susanne Küchler says that they are ‘made to enshrine the knowledge of the cultural past for the sake of future generations’ and adds that through monuments we can recall what is absent into the present.[31]
If, however, the past that is represented and commemorated by the monument is not recorded, there will come a time in the future when that past is no longer remembered, notwithstanding the existence of the monument. Memory, as Paula Hamilton explains in the book Memory and History in Twentieth-Century Australia, is gradually lost and ‘here the historian steps in to tell the stories that people forget’.[32]
The Merimbula Rotaract Club organised the town’s first festival, Merimbula Fest, in 1977 and promoted it as being in oyster country.[33] The festival’s logo (see Image 2.1) depicted an oyster under the words ‘oyster country’.
The festival, which ran from 22 to 30 October 1977, offered art and craft exhibitions, horse-racing, golf, tennis and fishing competitions, a fashion parade, crowning of Merimbula Fest Queens, dinners and balls, beer fest, oyster bar and barbeques, and a street procession.[34]
It was estimated that between 800 and 900 people watched the street procession of floats and cars on the final weekend which was described as ‘a very socially successful weekend, although financially the week could have ended better’.[35]
Image 2.1 1977 Merimbula Fest logo.[36]
