History
RAAF Edinburgh was constructed in 1955 as a support base for weapons development at the joint UK-Australian Weapons Research Establishment (WRE) at Woomera. This support had previously been temporarily based at Mallala. The base was located alongside the wartime Salisbury Explosives factory, in open fields between the then country villages of Salisbury (to the south) and Smithfield (to the north). At about the same time, the satellite town of Elizabeth was being established (to the east).
Support for WRE testing activities had greatly reduced by the late 1960s. Edinburgh's major role changed in 1977 when No. 10 Reconnaissance Squadron was relocated to South Australia from RAAF Base Townsville, which had been the centre of Australia's maritime reconnaissance operations since the Second World War. RAAF Base Edinburgh has since been home to the RAAF's Maritime Patrol Group, as well as No 1 Recruit Training Unit, the Institute of Aviation Medicine (AVMED) and the Aircraft Research and Development Unit (ARDU).
Originally, RAAF Edinburgh and the DSTO were located in Salisbury, (subsequently the suburb of Salisbury - Postcode 5108), in the City of Salisbury. In 1997, the Department of Defence decided to 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. The suburb of Salisbury was split in two, with the part containing the RAAF Base and DSTO renamed "Edinburgh" (after the RAAF Base). The new suburb was assigned the Postcode 5111.
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