Guide to Salisbury South Australia Australia

Located 25km north of Adelaide, Salisbury is a vibrant community offering a wide range of recreation opportunities including beautiful parks, reserves and wetlands for you to enjoy. It takes in the historic seaside town of St Kilda with its award winning adventure playground.

Explore local trails and wetlands including the Little Para Trails, the Wodliparri Trail at Kaurna Park and Dry Creek Linear Park.

Salisbury is a recognised national leader in a range of industries and takes in Technology Park, where companies deal in the many myriad forms of technology, such as computer systems, robotics and space technology.

The first people associated with the Salisbury area were the Aboriginal people known as the Kaurna. Recent research indicates that far from living a nomadic life style, groups were settled in campsites along the coast and inland plains of the Adelaide region. Many occupational and sacred sites still exist around the Salisbury area, including the Greenfields Wetlands. In 1839, three years after the founding of South Australia, a Scot named John Harvey migrated to South Australia. In 1847 he bought Section 2191 along the Little Para River and decided to develop a township there.

The township allotments went for sale the following year. John chose to name the township ‘Salisbury’ as his wife came from near Salisbury (on-the-plain) in England. His wife Ann (nee Pitman) was related to Sir Isaac Pitman of shorthand fame. Many of the streets in Salisbury are named after John and his family.

Most of the early settlers were English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh. There were also German settlers and some French.

Since World War Two Salisbury had grown and changed dramatically due to changes in transport, population growth, technology, immigration and its closest proximity to the city of Adelaide. In 1933 the District Council of Salisbury’s population was 2,385, in 1947 it was 6,160, in 1981 it was 88,100 and in 1996 112,842. The population make-up is now highly diverse, including a significant proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander residents, people from Asia, Europe and South America as well as those from Great Britain and Ireland.