Salisbury

Salisbury is a northern suburb in Adelaide, South Australia.

Salisburyis a northern suburb in Adelaide, South Australia. It is the seat of the City of Salisbury, and in the South Australian Legislative Assembly electoral district of Ramsay and the Australian House of Representatives division of Spence. The suburb is a service area for the City of Salisbury district, with an abundance of parklands, shops, cafes and restaurants. Parabanks Shopping Centre is also located in Salisbury, which includes Woolworths, Coles and Big W as its signature retailers.

Salisbury was founded when John Harvey began selling town allotments in 1848, from land he had purchased along the Little Para River in the previous year. The town was named after Salisbury in the United Kingdom which was close to his wife's hometown. There is a Wiltshire Street near Park Terrace in the city centre, parallel to John Street. Salisbury started its life as a service centre for the surrounding wheat and hay farms. Salisbury Post Office opened around March 1850.Salisbury railway station was built in 1857, and is where the standard gauge line to Crystal Brook diverges from the broad gauge to Gawler. Until the 1980s, this line was broad gauge. In 1985 Salisbury station was rebuilt by the State Transport Authority as a bus/rail interchange. This was the second purpose-built transport interchange in the Adelaide metropolitan area (the first had been at Noarlunga Centre).

Salisbury grew slowly from a town population numbered between 400 and 500 in 1881. The District Council of Salisbury was established in 1933 (amalgamating Yatala North south of the Little Para and Munno Para West to the north) which centered local governance of the area on the main population centre between Enfield and Gawler, the township of Salisbury.In 1940 an explosives and filling factory, the Salisbury Explosives Factory, was established at Penfield just to the north, for which employee housing was added at Salisbury. The population of the district doubled the population almost overnight to more than 4000, most of this being concentrated in the township of Salisbury. The factory, which covered around 12 km2 (4.5 sq mi), was in production by mid 1942 and by January 1943 employed 6,500 persons producing 135,000 shells, bombs and mines weekly.Two South Australian Australian Labor Party leaders, Lynn Arnold (Premier 1992–1993) and Mike Rann (Premier 2002–2011) both represented the Salisbury area in the South Australian Parliament. Arnold was elected as the MP for Ramsay, and then Taylor, and Rann was elected as the MP for Briggs and Ramsay.