Edinburgh, South Australia


Edinburgh is an outer northern suburb of Adelaide, South Australia in the City of Salisbury. Once a rural area, this changed in 1940 with the establishment of the Salisbury Explosives factory, followed by the Long Range Weapons Establishment in 1947, the High Speed Aerodynamics Laboratory, Propulsion Research Laboratory and the Electronics Research Laboratory, in 1949, and the establishment of the RAAF base in 1955. The LWRE and laboratories became the Weapons Research Establishment in 1955, the Defence Science & Technology Organisation in 1974, and the DST Group in 2015. It is now an industrial suburb, but is still dominated by RAAF Base Edinburgh, the DST Group Edinburgh site, with a few remaining sheep-grazing paddocks.
The suburb was created in 1997 when it was split from the suburb of Salisbury, when the Australian Government decided that the Australian Department of Defence would rationalise the then "DSTO Salisbury" site and sell off about 70% of the site, and surrounding "Defence-owned" crown land, to form the "Edinburgh Parks" industrial estate.
In addition to the RAAF base and the DST Group site, the suburb is home to several of Defence contractors, a number of automotive component and parts manufacturers, and other industries, as well as the Penfield Golf Club golf course, a model railway track, a model boat facility, a pistol range, gemology clubrooms, and a few remaining flocks of sheep.

Edinburgh Parks

The City of Salisbury's website states: "Edinburgh Parks is one of Australia's largest advanced industrial precincts and has more than 300 hectares of fully developed land available." It is a "$1.9 billion investment and comprises four precincts designated for aerospace and manufacturing, defence technology, logistics support and automotive industries." "Edinburgh Parks industrial blocks are among the best value industrial land in Australia. The site is ideally located in a major industrial growth corridor connected by Adelaide's new northern super highway system."
Organisations established in the area include: BAE Systems Australia; DHL; Inghams; MTU Detroit Diesel; Coles Supermarkets Distribution Centre; and Lockheed Martin Australia. The City of Salisbury estimates that over 3,000 jobs have been created in the area through the creation of Edinburgh Parks.
The "Invest Northern Adelaide" website, a collaboration of the cities of Playford, Salisbury, and Tea Tree Gully, makes similar glowing claims.