Grantville’s big 150th bash

Grantville has celebrated its 150th birthday with a heritage-inspired community day this month.

Grantville Historical Society president Geoff Guilfoyle told the crowd that Grantville was gazetted in 1872 and was the “biggest kid on the block” in the Shire of Phillip Island and Woolamai.

“Wonthaggi didn’t exist as a town, it was just an area, Inverloch wasn’t part of the shire, and Cowes, though it existed and even then was important as a tourist destination, was reached only by ship, which limited numbers,” Geoff said.

Geoff said what made Grantville important was timber, cut from the forests that covered the Bass Valley hills, by Brazier and Co and sent for export to Melbourne.

“But much of the timber had been milled by the end of 1880. Brazier and Co was gone by 1881 and with it the timber industry as a major employer.

“Grantville should have faded away. Yet it continued to grow because it was more than just a timber town.”

He said just as Melbourne visitors drop by Grantville today, “it wasn’t much different in 1888”.

“Settlers or visitors would arrive at Grantville by Cobb and Co. coach – the line terminated here – or came in by ship.

“Then they would move off to their holdings near Almurta or Glen Forbes or Corinella.”

He said in 1988 Grantville had an array of businesses including a sawmill, hotel, coffee palace, blacksmith, a shoe and bootmaker, and a cricket, football and rifle club.

In the 1890s there was a library, racecourse and newspaper, despite a wide depression.

“Grantville went into a fatal decline after 1910. Businesses either shut down or moved away, and with them went the people,” Geoff told the crowd.

“The town entered a deep slumber from which it didn’t emerge until the 1990s.”