City of Burnside

The City of Burnside is a local government area in the South Australian city of Adelaide stretching from the Adelaide Parklands into the Adelaide foothills with an area of 2,753 hectares (6,800 acres). It was founded in August 1856 as the District Council of Burnside, the name of a property of an early settler, and was classed as a city in 1943. The LGA is bounded by Adelaide, Adelaide Hills Council, Campbelltown, Mitcham, Norwood Payneham and St Peters and Unley.

A primarily residential upper middle class area, Burnside has little to no industrial activity and a small commercial sector. Over 257 hectares (640 acres) of its area is dedicated to Parks and Reserves, the result being one of the greenest areas in Adelaide.^{[citation needed]}

It was one of the first areas outside of Adelaide to be settled, with the early villages of Magill, Burnside, Beaumont and Glen Osmond now inner suburbs.

At the 2021 census, City of Burnside was considered the most relatively socio-economically advantaged LGA in South Australia, and the suburb of Skye the third most advantaged locality in the state (behind nearby Springfield and Mount George), according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics' SEIFA indexes.

Prior to the British colonisation of South Australia in 1836, Burnside was inhabited by the Kaurna, an Aboriginal people who lived around the creeks of the River Torrens during the summer months and in the Adelaide Hills during the wintertime. The area was first settled in 1839 by Peter Anderson, a Scots migrant, who named it Burnside after his property's location adjacent to Second Creek (in Scots, "Burn" means creek or stream). The Village of Burnside was established shortly thereafter and the District Council of Burnside was gazetted in 1856, being separated from the larger East Torrens Council. The council's first chairman was Dr. Christopher Rawson Penfold, of Penfolds Wines fame.

The present Council Chambers were built in 1927/28 in Tusmore, with the council becoming a municipality in 1935. With strong growth and development throughout the region, Burnside was then proclaimed a city in 1943. The 1960s brought Burnside Library, built next to the Council chambers, and the George Bolton Swimming Centre in Hazelwood Park. Both were further expanded and upgraded between 1997 and 2001.

Beaumont House, a historic structure, was constructed for the first bishop of Adelaide, Augustus Short, during 1851. Wineries, mining and olive groves were the mainstay of an early Burnside economy; Glen Osmond boasted substantial mineral deposits and world-class vineyards were established at Magill. The first council chamber was designed by chairman George Soward and built in 1869 by Thomas Hill and William Yateman.

Burnside has an area of 2,753 hectares (6,800 acres) and is located from the east to the south-east of the Adelaide city centre and parklands, extending east to the Cleland National Park in the Mount Lofty Ranges. Two creeks of the River Torrens run through a gradually sloping plain from the ranges; there is much variation in land use and topography.