Glenalta is a suburb located in the south eastern Foothills of the

Mount Lofty Ranges The Mount Lofty Ranges are a range of mountains in the Australian state of South Australia which for a small part of its length borders the east of Adelaide. The part of the range in the vicinity of Adelaide is called the Adelaide Hills and d ...

Adelaide Adelaide ( , ; ) is the list of Australian capital cities, capital and most populous city of South Australia, as well as the list of cities in Australia by population, fifth-most populous city in Australia. The name "Adelaide" may refer to ei ...

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...

. It is adjacent to

Belair National Park Belair National Park (formerly known as the National Park and as Belair Recreation Park) is a protected area in Belair, South Australia, southeast of Adelaide city centre; it covers an area of . It was proclaimed in 1891 and was the first nation ...

. In 2009, demographer

Bernard Salt Bernard Salt is an author, demographer, and since 2002 a regular columnist with ''The Australian'' newspaper. Between 2011 and 2019 he was an adjunct professor at Curtin University Business School, and holds a Master of Arts from Monash Univer ...

of the Sunday Mail judged Glenalta to be Adelaide's most liveable suburb, citing its "affordability, access and ambience".

History

The first European settlers in the area of Glenalta arrived in the 1840s, with the area named "

Blackwood Blackwood may refer to: Botany * African blackwood (''Dalbergia melanoxylon''), a timber tree of Africa * African blackwood ('' Erythrophleum africanum''), (''Peltophorum africanum'') also Rhodesian blackwood, trees from Africa * Australian blac ...

Vale Farm". The name Glenalta is derived from "glen" (valley) and "alta" (high), hence meaning 'a valley near a hill'. In 1869, the Blackwood Inn (renamed the Belair Hotel in 1880) was opened by Robert Burfield, one of the earlier settlers in the area and a trustee of the Inebriates Retreat in nearby

Belair Belair or Bélair may refer to: People *Bianca Belair, wrestler *Sanité Bélair (1781–1802), Haitian freedom fighter *Anne Liger-Belair, Belgian writer known as Anne Duguël Places Historic locations *Belair (Nashville, Tennessee), United Sta ...

. The suburb was initially divided in 62 allotments in 1926, then subdivided further in the 1950s and 1960s.

Transport

The suburb is served by Glenalta railway station on the

Belair line The Belair line is a suburban rail commuter route in greater Adelaide, South Australia, that runs from the Adelaide railway station to Belair in the Adelaide Hills via the Adelaide-Wolseley line using diesel 3000/3100 class railcars. This pa ...

. Bus routes , , and operate to and from the city from nearby Blackwood Interchange, and routes and operate to and from

Aldgate Aldgate () was a gate in the former defensive wall around the City of London. The gate gave its name to ''Aldgate High Street'', the first stretch of the A11 road, that takes that name as it passes through the ancient, extramural Portsoken ...

from Blackwood Interchange.

References

Suburbs of Adelaide {{Adelaide-geo-stub