[11] The Town of Parndana which was proclaimed on 26 July 1951 under the Crown Lands Act 1929-1944, occupied a triangular-shaped area of land in the cadastral unit of the Hundred of Seddon bounded by the Playford Highway on the north-west, the Rowland Hill Highway to the south-west and the Wedgewood Road to the east.

Returned soldiers had to agree to live and work in camps to undertake this clearance work for a number of years before being allocated a block of land which then required further development before they could begin to farm the land, the costs of this further development being bourne by the settlers using government loans (arbitrarily administered by public servants without any specific knowledge of farming needs in the district).

Many settlers were unable to succeed in raising sheep (recommended as the best use of the land) because of the widespread use of the Yarloop clover (recommended for use in heavy wet soils), which was subsequently discovered to reduce the fertility of sheep,[12] but at the time the settlers were blamed for their poor farm management skills.

The locality name was spelt incorrectly in the notice gazetted on 16 May 2002 and was subsequently corrected in the South Australian Government Gazette on 29 August 2002.

[citation needed] The Parndana Research Centre was established to the south of the town as a support for early farming activities but closed in the 1990s.