Saturday, 19 July 2014

Adelaide River 17th July 2014




These are various photos from around the cemetery.

We stopped into Adelaide River on our way to Katherine. Since visiting the WWII sites in Darwin Jacob had really taken an interest into what had happened.  He had bought a book on the Darwin bombings while on Darwin and started and completed it while in Tumbling Waters.
We visited the war cemetery in Adelaide River (the 4th largest war cemetery in Australia) with the 1st being Sydney, then Melbourne, Perth and finally Adelaide River.
We walked around the cemetery, with Jacob taking notice of the age of the fallen with the youngest being 18 and oldest 52. Although majority being in their twenties.
There were the different categories of the defence force including navy, air force, army and merchant navy.
In the cemetery there are 63 civilians including 9 Post Office workers who died as a result of a direct hit on the Post Office by the Japanese bombs. Otherwise there are 434 burials in the cemetery including Australian's, Canadian's and British soldiers.
There was also a change over time with the head stone markings of the graves. Originally being wooden crosses, then concrete crosses, then marble headstone (like you see in most war cemeteries) and now they have the bronze plaques. These were all changed due to the weather conditions not being kind to the grave markings.
We went into the information centre of the cemetery where we found one very passionate worker who told us a number of stories related to some of the soldiers and civilians in the cemetery. She would've spoken to us all day if we didn't have to keep moving towards Katherine.

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