Lockleys

Lockleys is an inner western suburb of Adelaide, located on Kaurna land, in the City of West Torrens.

Lockleys is an inner western suburb of Adelaide, located on Kaurna land, in the City of West Torrens.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data from May 2021 revealed that Adelaide's western suburbs had the lowest unemployment rate in South Australia.

The area was subject to flooding by the River Torrens, which originally ran into an area named "The Reedbeds" in the upper reaches of the Port River. In the 1930s the Torrens Channel, also named Breakout Creek, was cut through the coastal dunes to Gulf St Vincent, to drain the wetlands and eliminate the flooding. A large part of Lockleys is within a bend of the River Torrens.

Hence, prior to subdivision, the area was renowned for its rich soil, market gardens and greenhouses. The name comes from a property (section 145) owned by Charles Brown Fisher, then Edward Meade Bagot and Gabriel Bennett, who built a course there for amateur horse racing. The property was rented by trainers J. Eden Savill and C. Leslie Macdonald for their Lockleys Stables where many good racehorses were prepared.The area was divided for housing, however the Hank family lived on Torrens Avenue, Lockleysand had established 11 acres of market garden there after world war I. The Hank brothers (Ray, Bill and Bob) all attended the Lockleys Primary School in Brooklyn Park and would all become footballers for the West Torrens Football Club in the SANFL. Bob Hank would go on to become an AFL Hall of Fame inductee, winning the Magarey Medal in both 1946 and 1947 and winning a record 9 league best and fairest awards for his club. A pavilion in the eastern grandstand at Adelaide Oval is named the Bob Hank Pavilion and the grandstand at Thebarton Oval is name the Hank Brothers Stand after these Australian Football legends. Bob Hank also famously clean bowled Sir Donald Bradman in a District Cricket final in March 1947 whilst playing for the West Torrens Cricket Club against Bradman's Kensington Cricket Club.The former John Martin's department store had a bulk warehouse on Pierson Street, which was also a storage location for the floats used in the company's annual Christmas Pageant. The warehouse was converted by EDS for a data and call centre, which opened in 1996, and later owned by the Maras Group and operated by Westpac as a mortgage processing centre. In September 2021a development application was announced for rezoning the call centre and adjacent child care centre, to allow a medium density residential development to be built on the site.Lockleys was the home of the former Odeon Star cinema, later renamed to Windsor Lockleys Cinema, on Henley Beach Road which ceased operating in August 2012 and was demolished in 2020 after widespread public debate and resistance from organisations who saw its heritage and cultural value to the area.