There are few details Toni Tapp-Coutts can't remember about Australia Day 1998, or the days and weeks afterwards, but these things stand out.
The smell of rotting food and musty old furniture and the camaraderie and humour in the face of disaster.
"A few times I said to my family, 'I feel like I'm in a movie, this can't be happening'. It was so overwhelming," she said.
"The devastation, the loss of everything you own, and all your friends and all your neighbours … It affected everyone, whether you were in the flood zone or not."
In the days leading up to the 1998 floods, unrelenting torrents of rain soaked the ground and forced the river up to record levels, then when it was filled to the brim, the water broke the banks in multiple locations.
Muddy water lapped the ceilings of shops on the main street of Katherine, destroying everything inside.
"I'm not the type of person to get devastated about things, but it was so overwhelmingly, incredibly hard to handle," Ms Tapp-Coutts said.
"I had a business in the main street of Katherine, a little dress shop … It just looked like there had been a big washing machine in there."
Ms Tapp-Coutts is one of the few who can recall the stories her parents told her about the 1957 flood, which saw water rise more than a metre above the main street.
Nearly everyone who lived in Katherine during the late 1990s has a story about the one-in-100-year event that left thousands of people stranded and three families facing the reality of life without their loved ones.
Years later, as the annual end-of-year wet season fills the Katherine River higher and higher, there is always a backdrop of apprehension.
Two-metre-high wall to slice through Katherine
No human intervention will ever protect Katherine from a similar event, which was one of the worst natural disasters to hit the region to date.
But the government hopes building a high concrete wall through the middle of town will help prevent catastrophe from a smaller flood.
"We're putting in some flood levee banks — that will address the issue of those one-in-20-year floods," Eva Lawler, the Minister for Infrastructure, Planning and Logistics, said.
The northern section is already under construction, and will run from Knotts Crossing Resort, along the eastern side of the town to the Stuart Highway at a cost of $10 million.
Set to be built almost 2 metres high and 10 to 15 metres wide at the base, the wall is expected to take up a lot of space.
But Ms Lawler said it would be a "lovely addition to this area".
"Where the roads cross, there will be barriers that will be able to rise up and block the flow of water.
"It will have a gentle embankment … you'll be able to well and truly see it, it will be part of the landscape here in Katherine."
Site engineer Simon Cassidy said the flood levee would be "impenetrable by water", and described it as a mini dam wall that would tie into a number of culverts.
Despite extensive community consultation in 2018, designs were never made public, which has left many Katherine residents bewildered and apprehensive about the major change to their town.
Cause for concern for some long-time residents
Former Katherine mayor and Order of Australia recipient Jimmy Forscutt said the levee banks were "on the wrong side".
"It doesn't make sense to a local like me," he said.
"Why would you build a levee bank in the middle of a flood plain?
He said, instead, a levee should be built along the banks of the river.
"I expect in the next big flood, if I'm around to see it, that they are going to find that levee bank has caused more problems than it's so-called going to try to fix," he said.
Claire Brown, an executive director in the Northern Territory government, who played a major role in the planning, said the structure was designed to ensure it did not increase flooding in any other areas.
