When Kim Scott moved into a tropical house at age three she had no idea it would spark a life-long fascination.
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She wasn't always fortunate enough to live in one of the breezy, outside-meets-inside designs, unique to Katherine.
It was a 'shack' which she first called home - behind the power station - at a time not everyone even had a house in Katherine.
"I have such good memories of growing up in a tropical house," she said.
"They were built with one set of stairs, which is unheard of these days, but they were a playground for me.
"I loved the shiny floors, and I loved that you could lie in bed at night and watch the fire flies - it was magical."
You'd be hard pressed to find an original tropical house in Katherine these days.
Of the 23 built in the 1950's, 18 still stand.
And only four of those remain in near original condition.
"We have moved away from the unique design which is perfect for the Katherine region to thick brick walls that shut you in and keep nature out," she said.
"It is cheaper for one, but less comfortable."
"Prior to and directly after World War Two, Katherine represented a ramshackle town, with residents making use of what they could to build their homes and businesses," Scott writes in her new book which captures Katherine's tropical housing precinct from 1946 to 1956.
She has spent the past seven years sifting through hundreds of archives, some of which no-one believed existed, to capture the 23 tropical houses dotted through Katherine.
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"With a severe accommodation shortage affecting the NT, and much of Australia in the 1940's and 1950's, the Commonwealth Government set about designing and building homes specifically suited for the tropical north," she continues in her book.
The first two built in Katherine were near where the Pop Rocket Cafe sits today.
There is scant, readily available detail on the houses, and studying interior design in Canberra at the time of research, Scott would travel back and forth to the Territory gathering bits and pieces along the way.
The task was a mammoth one to take on. She would spend hours locked away in dark rooms, pouring over planning documents and old pictures.
These were not things you could Google.
"I wanted to capture the period of these types of houses before they disappear," she said, "and leave a legacy to Katherine of how beautiful they are."
The book is an extension of an exhibition happening at O'Keeffe House later this month.
Hidden away in the town, the houses - and everything about them - will be on display.
"Part of the exhibition is to make people think about making these houses again," she said.
"If Katherine had continued with this style of housing we could have been a very unique town.
"And if we had our own unique architecture, it would be a tourist attraction in itself."
The book and exhibition also delves into early land ownership in Katherine, and the first Commonwealth Houses project.
The exhibition opens Saturday, July 27 at 10am and runs until Sunday, July 28.
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