Torrens Island the site at different times; the surviving Torrens Island Quarantine Station is listed on the South Australian Heritage Register. Tours of the heritage-listed Quarantine Station are conducted by the South Australian Maritime Museum. The Torrens Island Internment Camp was a World War I detention camp which held up to 400 men of German or Austro-Hungarian background between 9 October 1914 and 16 August 1915. There are two power stations on Torrens Island: A proposed third station known as the Barker Inlet Power Station was announced in 2017 with construction commenced in the third quarter of the year with the aim
River Torrens after him. In 1867, prison labour from Adelaide Gaol was used to build a wooden dam near the site of the current weir. The dam was poorly constructed and almost immediately the Torrens washed it away. Construction of a permanent concrete weir was begun in November 1880 and completed, at a cost of £7,000, in 1881. The sluice gates were closed to begin filling the Torrens Lake on 1 July 1881. At the lake's official opening on 21 July 1881 an estimated 40,000, almost the entire population of Adelaide, attended. During the 1889 flood, the weir was overwhelmed, its gates