Torrens lake helps solve problem of Adelaide's nonriver without outlet to sea; inspires 1880s beautified parklands
The overflow from Adelaide city's Torrens Lake at the weir installed in 1881. Inset: The Torrens Lake, created from a former series of waterholes, became a haven for rowers and recreational boating, depicted in a turn-of-the-century postcard.
Main image by Ernest Gall, courtesy State Library of South Australia
Besides inspiring the beautifying of the surrounding parklands, forming the Torrens Lake with a concrete weir in 1881 solved a basic dilemma about Adelaide's River Torrens: it wasn't a river. It was originally a chain of shallow summer water holes found by the first European settlers, although the Torrens could become an occasional serious flood threat.
South Australia's first surveyor-general Colonel William Light in the 1830s couldn’t find the Torrens’ exit to the seas. That’s because the Torrens finished in coastal dunes to the west of the city where it created a large freshwater wetland: the reed beds.
The Reedbeds in the 19th and early 20th centuries the generally recognised name for seasonal freshwater wetlands to the west of Adelaide comprising the floodplains of the River Torrens, and drained to Gulf St Vincent by the tidal estuaries of the Port River and the Patawalonga River. The area of Reedbeds roughly equated with the present-day suburbs of Cowandilla, Fulham, Lockleys, Underdale and West Beach, including the Adelaide Airport.
The wetlands were inundated annually by the Torrens' winter flows of the River Torrens, and supported abundant wildlife used by the Kaurna people during their summer camps along the coastal barrier dunes. The Torrens' flow to the sea at Henley Beach wasn’t enabled until 1930.
The 470-megalitre Torrens Lake was created in 1881 with the construction of a weir, landscaping of Elder Park and sodlifying the river's bank and surrounds into an English formal park. The lake formed a centrepiece of many Adelaide events.
Elder Park, with its iron rotunda was opened, in November 1882. The rotunda was a Glasgow built nine-metre-high iron bandstand, funded by Thomas Elder.
An upgrade of the Torrens Lake weir in the 1920s allowed its gates to be fully raised so water overflow could pass unimpeded.
