Salisbury, South Australia

Salisbury is a northern suburb of 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 many parklands, shops, cafés and restaurants.

History
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 Wiltshire, since his wife came from near Salisbury Plain in England. 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's first police station was established in 1859.

The area's first school, Salisbury Public School, was completed in 1877.

The 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 4.5 mi2, 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.

Churches
The first St John's Anglican Church was established on the block in Church Street around 1846 or 1850, one of the first churches to be constructed in Salisbury. As the size of the congregation increased, a second church, designed by Daniel Garlick in Gothic style, was built in 1865, after the first foundation stone was laid by Bishop Augustus Short in 1858. The smaller old church was used as a school from 1851 to 1877 (as well as serving as a church until 1865). The replacement church was gutted by fire in 1989, after being heritage-listed on the Register of the National Estate for its fine stained glass windows and other significant architectural and historical features. In 1995 an auditorium was built connecting the church and the church hall. The inaugural Edmund Wright Heritage Award for Heritage Places in 2003 was won by Peter Moeck for the new auditorium project by Brown Falconer. the official name of the church is Church of Saint John The Evangelist, but it is known as St John's Anglican Church.

In 1851, the first Methodist Church was erected. St. Augustine's Catholic Church was completed in March 1857.

Demographics
52.1% were born in Australia, other countries of birth were England 4.2%, Bhutan 4%, Myanmar 3.8%, Afghanistan 3.7% and Nepal 3.3%. 52.2% spoke English only used at home. Other languages spoken at home are Nepali 8.0%, Hazaraghi 3.6%, Italian 3%, Vietnamese 2.2% and Arabic 1.9%.

Transport
Trains to and from Adelaide and Gawler from Salisbury operate every 15 minutes at off-peak times on Monday to Friday, and every 30 minutes during the day on Saturday and Sunday. In the evening, services run every hour. In morning peak hours, there are several trains that run non-stop between Salisbury and Adelaide (or make only one stop, at Mawson Interchange). These are used by a significant number of city workers who either park their vehicle or transfer from buses at Salisbury Interchange.

Local buses from Salisbury Interchange, scheduled to connect with trains to and from Adelaide, use the Adelaide Metro integrated ticketing system. In May 2012 there are 13 local bus routes providing links to many of the northern suburbs, such as routes 400 and 430 to Elizabeth, route 415V to Golden Grove, routes 224, 225, 411 to Mawson Lakes, routes 225, 500, 502, 560 to Para Hills, routes 401, 411 to Paralowie and routes 404, 405 to Parafield Gardens.

Retail
The major retail zone in Salisbury is the Parabanks Shopping Centre, which is a short distance from Salisbury Interchange, and was first opened around 1977. The single-floor complex includes 74 stores and 3 anchor stores, with a total floor area of 23,800 m2, and around 1,400 parking spaces. In April 2008, property group Stockland sold the shopping centre to the Angaet Group. In 2015, an $18 million redevelopment of the centre was approved by the Salisbury Council's Development Assessment Panel. The redevelopment consisted of three stages, with five specialty stores added to the eastern side mall, the relocation of the Coles supermarket into the site of the former Harris Scarfe store, and external upgrades which were completed in October 2017.