Grantham Island is an uninhabited island occupying 51 hectares of Proper Bay,

Spencer Gulf The Spencer Gulf is the westernmost and larger of two large inlets (the other being Gulf St Vincent) on the southern coast of Australia, in the state of South Australia, facing the Great Australian Bight. It spans from the Cape Catastrophe and ...

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

. The nearest geographical feature on the mainland is Murray Point, which is also undeveloped. The island was named by explorer

Matthew Flinders Captain Matthew Flinders (16 March 1774 – 19 July 1814) was a British navigator and cartographer who led the first inshore circumnavigation of mainland Australia, then called New Holland. He is also credited as being the first person to u ...

on 25 February 1802, after the municipal and parliamentary borough of

Grantham Grantham () is a market and industrial town in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England, situated on the banks of the River Witham and bounded to the west by the A1 road. It lies some 23 miles (37 km) south of the Lincoln and ...

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershire ...

, England. It lies 3 kilometres south of the

Port Lincoln Port Lincoln is a town on the Lower Eyre Peninsula in the Australian state of South Australia. It is situated on the shore of Boston Bay, which opens eastward into Spencer Gulf. It is the largest city in the West Coast region, and is located a ...

marina and is well vegetated.

History

In 1874, yachtsmen described Grantham Island as hosting "an abundance of rabbits... of all shades of colour." At the time, the island was covered with mallee and other scrub. The yachtsmen had gone ashore to shoot rabbits and "other sport". One man came across a "native pheasant" which "soared majestically away" after being shot at. The party also amused themselves by lassoing

penguins Penguins ( order Sphenisciformes , family Spheniscidae ) are a group of aquatic flightless birds. They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere: only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is found north of the Equator. Highly adapt ...

and setting them in the water racing. In the 1880s, Arthur Searcy had an encounter with a wallaby on the island, which he speculated had swum over from the mainland. In 1885, the South Australian Yacht Club stopped there to collect firewood. In December 1909, the Flinders Brass Band arranged a picnic to Grantham Island. About 100 people attended and arrived by motor and sailing boats. In February 1910, a fire was started on Grantham Island and became unmanageable. It spread over the whole island and after the fire, 'not a bush' remained. No stock were on the island at the time. Iron Monarch pre-1937

In 1937, the 28 ft cutter ''Sylvia'' was wrecked in

harbour on returning from a picnic on Grantham Island. The steamer ''

Iron Monarch Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in fr ...

'' was going astern from the jetty when the cutter passed behind it to inspect the vessel. ''Sylvia'' was sucked into Iron Monarch's propeller and sank immediately. Two men clung to the rudder of ''Iron Monarch'''s propeller while is turned, while the other four aboard climbed into a dinghy which had been towed behind the cutter. The six occupants of the cutter all survived. In 1939 The Lands Department advised that Grantham Island would shortly be gazetted for lease. In the meantime, monthly occupation was granted to A. S. Crawford."Lincoln District Council - Meeting Held July 7"
''Port Lincoln Times'', South Australia (1939-07-13). Retrieved 2014-01-24.

References

{{Eyre Peninsula , state=autocollapse Islands of South Australia Spencer Gulf Uninhabited islands of Australia