Lake Torrens Colonel Robert Torrens who was one of the founders of the South Australian colony. The lake filled in 1897 and again in April 1989. The 1989 filling resulted in the lake outflowing through the Pirie-Torrens Corridor to the Spencer Gulf, suggesting it likely did so in 1897 as well. It has a thin salt crust with red-brown clays beneath, which are soft and boggy. The area around the lake is sparsely vegetated with samphire, saltbush and bluebush. In April 2013, the full extent of Lake Torrens was gazetted by the Government of South Australia as a locality with the name
Electoral district of Torrens 1938 election, lasting until the 1985 election, though it was won once by Labor at the 1944 election. Torrens was one of just three metropolitan seats (with Burnside and Mitcham) won by the Liberal and Country League in 1965 and 1968. Torrens was recreated in its current state for the 1993 election, based on much of the abolished seats of Gilles and Todd, as a nominally marginal Labor seat, but was won for the Liberal Joe Tiernan. Tiernan died while in office in 1994, and Robyn Geraghty reclaimed the seat for Labor at the Torrens by-election with an 8.6 percent