Adelaide River War Cemetery

During the Second World War, Adelaide River (113 km south of Darwin, on the Stuart Highway) was the headquarters of a large base. The war cemetery was created especially for the burial of service personnel who died in this part of Australia. The Adelaide River War Cemetery was used by Australian General Hospitals numbers 101, 107, 119, 121 and 129 and after the war. The Army Graves Service also moved other graves there from isolated sites, temporary military burial grounds, and various civil cemeteries in the area. The war cemetery was taken over the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) in 1947 and was entered on the Register of the National Estate in 1984 and listed on the Northern Territory Heritage Register and Commonwealth Heritage Register. A total of 435 war graves marked by bronze plaques are contained in this cemetery. The burials include 14 airmen of the RAF; 12 unidentified men of the British Merchant Navy; one soldier of the Canadian Army; 18 sailors; 182 soldiers and 201 airmen of the Australian Forces and seven men of the Australian Merchant Navy. The Northern Territory Memorial to the Missing honours a further 292 Servicemen and women lost to the north of Australia. The adjacent civil section contains the graves of the nine Post Office staff killed on 19 February 1942 during the bombing of Darwin, one of 63 separate incidents on that date. The civilian casualties of the Second World War include 31 Indigenous Australians.