More than 52 folders stuffed to the brim date back to the early 1980s and tell the unique story of Katherine through the years - the '98 flood, babies born, deaths, car crashes, politics, culture - it is a treasure trove for future researchers and avid historians.

And it is now in the hands of professionals for safekeeping in archives built to withstand major weather events for at least 500 years.

It was a morning of reminiscing as Mrs Tapp Coutts packed the last of her collection into the back of a car to be taken to Darwin and sorted by the Library and Archive NT's manager of collection development Brian Hubber.

Over the next two months, Mr Hubber will be getting very acquainted with Katherine's history as he describes and catalogues the content - simply re-boxing it will likely take four weeks, he said.

And while the majority of the collection will be archived and used as a research resource, some could be adorned within the walls of the Parliament of the Northern Territory.

"I have a sense of anticipation about what treasures the collection will hold," Mr Hubber said.

"This is a fantastic snapshot of Katherine. This is of national significance.

"It is hard to maintain a collection like this in the Northern Territory with bugs and humidity to contend with, and this provides a really good snapshot of local life over a significant amount of time."

Tightly woven into the fabric of Katherine, Mrs Tapp Coutts and her family have become iconic in the town over the many years they have lived here.

An entire wall of the Katherine museum was once dedicated to her mother, June Tapp, and the council alderman and author once spent eight months on a mission to trademark graffiti painted on the railway bridge that reads "Jesus loves nachos", in the hopes it would help increase tourism.

"Rather than keeping handwritten journals of everything my family was doing and the happenings in Katherine, this was my way of recording my story," Mrs Tapp Coutts said.

The collection is extensive to say the least, including old Woolworths catalogues, event posters, menus of forgotten restaurants, letters, and notes from her three children.

"Once I started, I began to see all of these amazing things come into a visual story," she said.

"It shows just how much Katherine has lived through and grown."

As most families in Katherine lost everything in the 1998 flood, which swept through on January 27, stealing precious items on the way, Mrs Tapp Coutts says she was lucky.

"The water came over the kitchen bench and my boxes were flooded, but I managed to save them and dry them in the sun," she said.

Those, when they reach Darwin, will be frozen to kill potential mould residue that is rife during the steamy and wet tropical months in Katherine.

"It is a relief to get them into safe hands where they will be stored properly," Mrs Tapp Coutts said.

"I recognise that over time this has become a valuable collection of Katherine's social, political and cultural history."

The collection - to be named the Toni Tapp Coutts Collection - will be stored by the Library and Archive NT, and will be available for researchers across the globe.

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