Eastern states

In 1877, at the age of 22, Grainger travelled to Australia and took a position in the office of A. C. Mais, Engineer-in-Chief of the South Australian Public Works Department. He resigned in July 1878 after he had won a design competition for the Albert Bridge in Adelaide and was starting to get private work from a number of wealthy clients,^[2]: p.1 including Robert Barr Smith and Thomas Elder. Grainger became involved in the musical life of Adelaide, organised the first local string quartet, and provided space in his house for them to rehearse. Percy Grainger ascribes some of his exposure to music early on in his father's love of music.^[1]

After winning two major bridge design competitions, most notably for Princes Bridge Melbourne, and for the Sale Swing Bridge in 1879, he visited Victoria for the first time in February 1880 to inspect the Sale site. In October 1880 he married Rose Annie Aldridge, daughter of an Adelaide hotel-keeper,^[3]: p.3 in St Matthew's Church in Marryatville.^[7] In 1882, the couple moved to Victoria and settled in the Melbourne suburb of North Brighton, where their only son, christened George Percy Grainger, was born on 8 July 1882.^[8]

John Grainger was an accomplished artist, with broad cultural interests and a wide circle of friends.^[9] These included David Mitchell, whose daughter Helen later gained worldwide fame as an operatic soprano under the name Nellie Melba. Many years later in 1912, he designed extensions to Coombe Cottage, Melba's home in Coldstream.

For four years (1881–1885), he worked in partnership with an old friend, Charles D'Ebro, with whom he had sailed from England and with whom he had also worked in the South Australian Public Works Department.^[2]: p.4 They designed many notable buildings together, not just in Melbourne, such as the Fremantle Town Hall in 1881, and in 1884 won the competition to design Auckland's public library and municipal offices (now the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki). Other notable designs included the 1884 Equitable Co-operative in Collins Street (later occupied by Georges (store), and a grand Masonic Hall on the Collins Street hill (demolished). The partnership ended in 1885, and it would appear that the friendship later faltered, as D'Ebro failed to provide effective support for Grainger's nomination in September 1906 as a Fellow of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects (RVIA).^[2]: p.8 Grainger then practiced alone, designing the Maryborough School of Arts, and in 1887-8 was the engineer for the striking six-storey red brick Robur Tea House in South Melbourne, where he devised a unique solution of 450 ironbark piles and concrete rafts to cope with the swampy soil.^[10]

Grainger was a heavy drinker and a womaniser who, Rose learned after the marriage, had fathered a child in England before coming to Australia. His promiscuous lifestyle placed heavy strains upon the relationship, particularly when Rose discovered shortly after Percy's birth that she had contracted a form of syphilis from her husband.^[8][9] Despite this, the Graingers stayed together until 1890, when John embarked on returned briefly to England in a failed effort to see his father. At that time he was in very poor health from excessive drinking and smoking, and impoverished, having "lost all in over speculation in mines".^{[2]: pp.5–6}

On his return to Australia he settled in Adelaide, living for a year or so with his wife's sister May and her husband George Sydney Aldridge. Most of his water colour paintings (of which there are 10 in the Grainger Museum) date from this second Adelaide period.^[1] By 1895, he had sworn off drinking whisky and resumed a productive career which was undoubtedly enhanced by a happy relationship with a new life partner, Winifred Falconer. Following a share slump in Adelaide, the two moved in 1896 to Kalgoorlie,^[2]: p.6 Western Australia, where a major gold rush was in progress and he resided there for some three months, employed by Adelaide mining and cement entrepreneur, Richard Durrant Langley.

Western Australia

Though Western Australia was booming in the 1890s, the eastern states were then in recession and he was fortunate to be appointed Principal Architect in the Architectural Division of the Public Works Department at a salary of £600, commencing 1 March 1897, a position which he held until 31 July 1905 when he retired owing to ill health. Hillson Beasley had been acting in the position since November 1903.^[2]: p.8 His projects included the Government House ballroom (1899),^[11] Supreme Court, former Perth Museum, Library and Art Gallery, Parliament House, Perth (1899–1904), Perth Central Police Courts, the Old Northam Railway Station, and a number of substantial goldfields buildings, including the Warden's Court, Coolgardie and the Public Buildings in Kalgoorlie.^[2]: p.7

Return to Victoria

After pursuing a curative journey in Europe with his companion Winifred Falconer, Grainger returned to Melbourne in 1906, where he was awarded first prize in a design competition for the administrative block of the Melbourne Town Hall. Though experiencing the debilitating symptoms and pain of tertiary syphilis, he continued in practice in partnership with Phillip Kennedy and John Little as Grainger, Kennedy and Little. By 1910 the firm was reduced to Grainger and Little but continued to secure significant projects, including the first stage of the State Savings Bank in Elizabeth Street, and Collins House (both now demolished).^[13] Grainger retired in 1915, but his name lived on in the firm Grainger, Little and Barlow for many years. He died two years later in 1917,^[2]: p.9 and was buried at Box Hill Cemetery in an unmarked grave. A headstone was finally erected in 2013.^[14]