Matthew Flinders' grave to be dug up

The grave of Matthew Flinders - the first person to successfully circumnavigated Australia – has been earmarked for exhumation to make way for a British train line.

Flinders, who circled the country as commander of the HMS Investigator between 1801 and 1803 and came up with name "Australia", is among 60,000 bodies that are scheduled to be exhumed in the largest ever mass grave removal in British history.

The announcement comes 202 years since the explorer's death and will make way for a $90 billion high speed rail line that will connect London to cities in the country's far north.

"Flinders is important to Australia. He figures in all the Australian history textbooks for kids. We have other ¬explorers who are famous icons in our history but there is a particularly romantic attachment to Flinders," Former Australian high commissioner to Britain John Dauth told the Sunday Times.

The mass removal will see the St James’s Gardens burial ground completely destroyed to make room for the new infrastructure.

Archaeologists said it will be difficult to identify Flinder's grave due to the sheer number of bodies buried at the cemetery and a lack of records.