Lake Torrens Lake Torrens. The full extent of Lake Torrens has been protected as a national park under the "National Parks and Wildlife Act 1972" since 1991. Lake Torrens is part of an area known as the "Inland Saline Lakes" which has been listed in the Directory of Important Wetlands in Australia since at least 1995. Lake Torrens has been identified by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area known as the "Lake Torrens Important Bird Area" (IBA) because it supported up to 100,000 breeding banded stilts during the major filling event of 1989. It may occasionally support over 1% of the
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