ROADBOSS spends time with outback road builders F&J Bitumen following one of the harshest wet seasons on record, as they repair critical stretches of highway from Darwin to Katherine, and out to the WA border past Timber Creek, to see first-hand how one family keeps the Territory connected
The Northern Territory is a vast, punishing expanse with a road network spanning roughly 36,000km – just shy of the Earth’s circumference – and the majority of those roads snake through country more remote than most Australians will ever venture.
Up here, there is no summer or winter; there is only the wet and the dry. And when rain comes, it washes away roads and swallows entire towns whole.
This past wet season was one of the worst since the region was settled nearly a century ago. As we cross the Katherine River Bridge, standing an imposing 19 metres above the dry river bed, Rachel Lowery points out the window. She’s the Business Manager for F&J Bitumen, her family’s road-building outfit.
“We haven’t had a wet season like that for a very long time,” she says, looking down at the now half-dry river below. “The water was lapping this bridge during the worst of it. We’re still repairing all of the damage… and will be for quite a while”. It’s a vicious cycle, as the big wet rains down on the Top End each year, inevitable in its arrival yet unpredictable in its severity. It’s all the locals know, and they’re heavily reliant on the Lowerys to keep trucks running and towns open.
Roads are in this family’s blood. But, they’ve chosen to take care of the toughest region in Australia, in fact it might be one of the toughest on Earth. The F&J crew works behind the scenes to repair critical arterials that tether remote settlements and stations to the outside world. Seven days a week, without fail, they’re out working a stretch of road so remote you’ve probably never heard of it.
We haven’t had one like that for a very long time, and the water was lapping this bridge during the worst of it.
The sprawling operation is steered by founders Karen and George (unanimously known as Frog) who have been married for nearly 30 years. Their eldest son, Ben, is now the Director and Chief of Operations. Then there’s Rachel, who is effectively a ‘Karen in training’ and does a bit of everything.
Outside of the business, their middle son, Joey, runs a transport company, while their eldest daughter Georgia works as a local veterinarian.
Karen is the undisputed matriarch, holding the majority share of the business while managing the crews, the logistics and the administrative load of the company. She does all of this while battling Multiple Sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that frequently steals her ability to walk unaided. In a landscape defined by environmental degradation and physical resilience, Karen’s personal battle somewhat mirrors that of the highways her family repairs.
It’s a long run from Darwin to Katherine, via the Lowery’s hometown of Humpty Doo, before cutting west out to Timber Creek. Rachel is our chaperone, proving to be a wealth of information on both the region and her family’s business.
Karen was originally going to drive us out, but an unexpected MS flare-up the day before our arrival confined her to the company’s home base in Humpty Doo. Incredibly, that condition doesn’t stop her from simultaneously operating the local cafe and butcher shop. And when you talk to Karen about her health, there is no self-pity whatsoever … she’s a battler.
But, there isn’t much she can do when her symptoms come on. She tells me that her only real reprieve came from a round of chemotherapy 12 years ago during a battle with breast cancer. Following a double mastectomy, the chemo flattened her immune system, with the silver lining being that her MS symptoms settled down for a few years.
F&J Bitumen run a fleet made up of Volvo, UD, Mack and Kenworth runners of varying ages, with the Volvos set up for spraying bitumen and the UDs used as tippers. Images: Thomas Wielecki
Rachel warns me that her mother isn’t a woman to be trifled with, but her hospitality tells me otherwise. Karen meticulously mapped out every logistical leg of our trip, ensuring we were fed, housed, watered (“what do you guys drink…beer or spirits?” she asked me a few days before our arrival) and treated like crew from the moment we landed. Rachel tells me with a shrug, “that’s just how we are”.
Driving out of Darwin, a Kenworth thunders down the road, heading in the opposite direction, pulling four AAA side tippers. Rachel throws a familiar wave up to the rugged-looking fella in the cab.
“That was Joey, my brother,” she says, proudly. “He owns a few road trains that he runs around the Territory.”
It’s a real family affair. Rachel’s other brother, Ben, now controls the operational reins of F&J Bitumen after buying Frog out a couple of years back. Her sister Georgia was a big part of the business too, before transitioning to her current role as a veterinarian down in Humpty Doo.
Even Rachel’s partner, Connor Fitzgerald, is on the payroll, working in Frog’s bitumen crew. Connor spent a few years with F&J before doing a stint mustering at Coolibah Station – the property featured on the ‘Keeping up the with the Joneses’ television show.
When he returned, he plucked up the courage to make a move on Rachel … but not before formally asking Frog for permission.
When it pulls mate, it fuckin’ pulls. It’s the pride of the fleet, this one.
“I think Dad gave him a pretty stern warning though … and he’d probably go through with it!” Rachel laughs.
Rachel admits she hates the drive up to Katherine. It’s long, hot and relentlessly straight, and we happen to be tackling it right as the sun dips below the horizon. Her Prado doesn’t have a bullbar fitted yet, so she’s watching the darkening road shoulders like a hawk.
“I don’t really want to hit a ‘roo if we can avoid it!” she says, peering through the blinding glare.
Once we cut west onto the Victoria Highway, long grass lining the road has us joking about wildlife … and we should’ve known better. Out of nowhere, a ‘roo bounds onto the road. Rachel slams the anchors on but clips it with the front-right guard of her Prado, tearing the wheel arch flare clean off.
“What a BASTARD,” she yells, pulling over to rip away the loose plastic before pushing on into the night.
Rachel describes herself as an old soul, and it’s hard to argue. She’s only 21 years old, but her fierce independence and blunt, take-no-prisoners approach to business make her feel like someone well into their thirties. Her sunglasses and the glare hide the fact she indeed looks her age.
The F&J crew works behind the scenes to repair critical arterials that tether remote settlements and stations to the outside worlds, seven days a week, without fail. Images: Thomas Wielecki
She explains that while the recent floods battered Katherine and Douglas Daly the hardest, F&J’s contract up here covers everything from Pine Creek to Dunmarra, and out to the WA border – but they’ll go anywhere in the Territory.
We finally roll into Timber Creek to park up for the night, catching a few hours of sleep before a 4:00am alarm calls us back to the blacktop.
Staring out into the dead of an outback morning, the scale of the isolation out here hits us. There’s no ambient light, no noise pollution; just a thin sliver of moon illuminating the prehistoric rock formations in the distance.
“It’s epic through here during the day,” Rachel says, as I try to piece together my surroundings along a windy stretch of road. “There’s literally a giant mountain right next to the road here, you just can’t see it.”
It’s a 170km run from Timber Creek to the WA border, where Frog’s crew is mending severe flood damage that cut off the interstate highway entirely when it was at its worst.
We pull up near the Bradshaw Bridge, waiting in the biting, nippy air as the crew stages out from a nearby army base. For a long time, there is absolute, eerie silence and I wonder whether we’ve missed them.
It’s epic here during the day. There’s literally a giant mountain right next to the road here, you just can’t see it.
Suddenly, the guttural roar of the F&J convoy echoes through the night as an assortment of trucks turn out onto the main highway. The big Volvo sprayer leads the charge with Frog at the helm, followed immediately by a mean-looking Mack Titan wheeled by Connor. The Titan absolutely sings, as Connor punches it up to speed, changing gears the old way. Behind, a pair of UD Quon tippers and a support Hilux roll out.
After a few minutes in chase, the convoy pulls onto a gravel patch just off the road, where there are piles of rock left from recent work. They unhook the trailers they don’t need and drop some surplus aggregate from one of the tippers. A few kilometres up the road, right at the Kununurra intersection, they unload the heavy machinery.
Today, Frog’s crew is tackling a cluster of seal patches scattered across a few kilometres of broken highway. There’s no time wasted, as the men scurry around, each with a job to do, eager to beat the heat.
They run a fleet of trucks made up of Volvo, UD, Mack and Kenworth runners of varying ages. The Volvos are set up for spraying bitumen, while the big-banger Mack Titan and Kenworth T601 are used to float the heavier earthmoving gear and heated bitumen tankers around, running mainly as triples. The UDs are used as tippers, carrying crushed rock with precise spreaders on the back to control the flow rate of aggregate.
In terms of the company’s trailers, it’s a bit of a mix with Jamieson bulkers, Freightmaster dropdecks and the tippers are all STE, but there’s a heap of other equipment on the books.
In fact, Rachel tells me the company now has 60 pieces of equipment, from big CAT wheel loaders and asphalt pavers to smaller Kubota tractors that spin up brush attachments to clean the road surface.
Above (bottom left): Karen Lowery is the undisputed matriarch, managing the crews, the logistics and the administrative load, all while battling Multiple Sclerosis. Images: Thomas Wielecki
Just before I came up, Frog’s crew was out sealing the Plenty Highway, on the Northern Territory side, so you can only imagine the colossal transport task to get this gear around the place.
Frog steps down from the cab of the Volvo, a seasoned outback operator who has been fixing roads out here since 1994. His face has been weathered by the harsh Territory sun, but he still looks too young to be knocking on 60. There’s a youthful spark in his eyes, perhaps the result of doing what he loves for so long.
We begin to talk trucks and he reminisces on his early days running an old International S Line road train to feed his young family, hauling everything from crushed cars to fertiliser across the country.
“It was a simpler time but it was hard to make ends meet, the GST just came in and people weren’t paying,” Frog says, throwing back a Paul’s iced coffee.
“I had tippers for bitumen seal work at the same time, which helped.” He paid that road train off in two years, but the bitumen game was where he wanted to play.
Frog’s crew are eclectic, but clearly thick as thieves which isn’t surprising given they spend every waking moment together. There’s one-legged Robbie Taylor and his sharp-tongued son Steve, Connor Fitzgerald donning a distinct curly mullet and moustache combo, and Lucas Gevinti who goes by ‘Frenchy’.
When I drive over a bit of road I did 10 years ago I do feel proud. I think ‘yeah, I did that, and I did it well’.
“How’re ya moite?” Frenchy says when I wander over, cigarette hanging from his lower lip as he drags large sheets of paper across the road to stop bitumen overspray. He’s the most Australian Frenchman you’ll ever meet, after spending six years in the Territory, but there’s still a little hint of something exotic in that accent.
It’s warming up and I ask Frenchy, who’s now profusely sweating, whether this is a tough job through summer. “We don’t have summer, moite. It’s just wet season or dry season.”
“Yeah, but obviously the really hot days are a slog right?” I ask.
“Every day is a hot day bro,” he says, now resting his hands on his knees as sweat drips onto the powdery dirt lining the road. He’s right. The road radiates heat and the fresh, shiny bitumen reflects the sun. It’s hot … and we’re in the middle of winter.
Frenchy admits to dialling up the Australianisms when back home, no doubt in the pursuit of female attention.
“I’ll wear my work jeans and boots into a bar and they all think I’m Aussie, until I speak French and they go, ‘what’!?” he laughs.
F&J Bitumen operate a fleet of trucks and around 60 pieces of equipment, from big CAT wheel loaders to smaller Kubota tractors that spin up brush attachments to clean the road surface. Images: Thomas Wielecki
The science behind laying down a road seal that will actually last up here is a high-stakes balancing act. The bitumen is transported out from Darwin, or from Townsville, in heated bulkers equipped with diesel burners, keeping the product sticky at around 160 degrees. A more specialised rubber blend usually acts as a bottom and a top-coat seal, however, it’s only being used for the topcoat of today’s seal, and it cooks at a toasty 200 degrees.
Frog’s crew works fast, and it’s clear they’ve done this hundreds, if not thousands, of times before. Everyone’s got a job, and they communicate with whistles, shouts and hand gestures.
The Kubota sweeper clears the deck. Then, large rolls of brown paper are laid flat across the bitumen edges and weighted down with gravel to form a sharp, seamless joint free of bumps. The Volvo sprayer rolls forward at 20 to 30 km/h, unleashing a pressurised, steaming torrent of black tar that looks like boiling Coca-Cola. Running in reverse immediately behind it, the UD tipper spreads a precise layer of rock into the sticky mass.
The aroma is similar to hot engine oil, with a hit of thinners, which makes sense because bitumen is a by-product of crude. It kind of smells like an old air-cooled motorcycle with an oil leak, once it’s nice and hot.
Following the trucks, workers shovel furiously to ensure an even spread of rock before a massive Caterpillar roller flattens the patch out. It’s an incredibly quick process, like clockwork. But, Frog reminds me from the cabin of the sprayer, the time-consuming part is the travel, the setup and all the other elements that have to fall into place.
Frog is a picture of total concentration as he prepares to seal the road with one more layer of rubberised bitumen, fiddling with a dash-mounted control panel to activate air actuators that give him precise control of the various nozzles. He sets his ground speed and hits the throttle. He prefers a manual gearbox for this. I can tell he takes a lot of pride in what he does, because it’s dead silent in the cabin when he starts spraying.
We don’t have summer, moite. It’s just wet season or dry season.
“When I drive over a bit of road I did 10 years ago I do feel proud. I think ‘yeah, I did that, and I did it well’,” he says after we’re done.
Frog’s quick to admit that this lifestyle demands a rare level of resilience from a partner. When he first started, he spent a grand total of two weeks at home every year. “It’s a bit better now, but when I do have a day off I just bugger off in the boat and go fishing,” he smiles. “You gotta get that salt water in your veins.”
In between runs, I stand and admire the well-used Mack Titan, which has more than two million kilometres on the clock and is going strong. Frog usually wheels the Bulldog, but today it’s Connor.
“When it pulls mate, it fuckin’ pulls,” Connor tells me. “It’s the pride of the fleet, this one.”
Plus, it’s a simpler truck. A Signature Series Cummins with 600hp, backed by a trusty Road Ranger, and being a bit older there isn’t an Adblue tank to be seen. It also sounds angry, which is the result of Joey, the other son with the road trains, tricking it up with big stacks for a bit of extra noise.
“Beeeeee-autiful truck to drive,” Connor reiterates. “All I wanted to do was drive road trains when I was younger so I just love being in the truck. My old man has a Kenworth, but I’m a bit of a Mack man after driving this one.”
Laying down a road seal that will actually last up here is a high-stakes balancing act, with bitumen transported out from Darwin, or from Townsville, in heated bulkers equipped with diesel burners, keeping the product sticky at around 160 degrees. Images: Thomas Wielecki
Connor enjoyed his time contract mustering but realised there was more money in bitumen. Plus, he had his eye on Rachel, so it was a logical move.
“We’ve got a good crew,” Rachel tells me back in the Prado, as I soak up a bit of air-con. “The boys will always pull over and check if someone is broken down or run out of fuel out here … no matter how busy they are. It’s just that community involvement out here.
“One time when the big floods were on a couple of years ago, a woman was stuck between two causeways when the road was flooded. They helped her through because it could have ended badly, especially being a young woman.”
By the end of the day, the spray truck’s rear number plate is completely caked in a rock-solid layer of black bitumen.
“The scaleys don’t love it but there’s nothing you can do about it,” Frog laughs, cracking open his third carton of Paul’s iced coffee for the day. “They’re pretty good up here, they know who we are and know our trucks are all well-kept.”
With the border patches permanently sealed, we make the long trek back to the family’s property in Katherine. The site functions as a working hay farm and secondary equipment depot, and it will soon house a permanent asphalt plant and staff accommodation blocks to allow F&J to better service the remote regions.
Beeeeee-autiful truck to drive. My old man has a Kenworth, but I’m a bit of a Mack man after driving this one.
Frog insists I jump into his side-by-side buggy for a tour of the property, ordering me to grab a cold roadie beer for the ride. “Actually, grab us another one too,” he insists. He’s an easy person to feel comfortable around, and it isn’t just the plentiful beer. He’s full of stories but equally interested in your own experiences.
Long before he entered the road-sealing game, he was a professional pet-meater, hunting down wild buffalo and feral game.
“I could skin and de-bone a horse in about four-and-a-half minutes, or a buffalo in about five or six,” he tells me, with a confidence that suggests he probably still could. “I was bloody fit back then, though.”
When he was just 19, he was hunting barefoot – as he always did – and wandered into a muddy buffalo wallow. He felt what he thought was a submerged log, before a 2.8-metre crocodile came out of nowhere, grabbing his leg and shaking him violently. Frog managed to anchor one arm around a tree root while using his free hand to close the bolt of his rifle. The catch-22 was that if he fired at the croc’s head, the bullet would likely blow his leg to bits, and if he missed he’d only make it angrier.
“I just clouted her with the butt of my rifle, and she opened her mouth right up,” Frog says, reenacting the moment. “My leg was completely cramped up but I scrambled backwards then took off.”
By the time a bloodied Frog dragged himself to hospital, he told the doctors that a wild dog had attacked him, terrified he’d get in strife for hunting beyond his allocated zone.
The F&J Bitumen crew is eclectic. There’s one-legged Robbie Taylor and his sharp-tongued son Steve, Connor Fitzgerald donning a distinct curly mullet and moustache combo, and Lucas Gevinti who goes by ‘Frenchy’. Images: Thomas Wielecki
“The doctors kept saying ‘we know it was a croc, so you’re going to lose your leg if we don’t treat this properly’,” he chuckles, explaining that croc wounds carry nasty bacteria so you can’t stitch them closed.
Frog refused to budge. “I just kept saying, ‘DOG’,” he laughs.
When a senior doctor, who was a friend of the family, came in and gave him an ultimatum (your leg, or the truth) Frog cracked and offered his confession: “Fine, it was a four-legged swamp dog.”
Frog pulls up an old NT News clipping on his phone, outlining his infamous battle with the “four-legged swamp dog”, and he looks eerily like a young Paul Hogan … if Hoges was a genuine bushy who hunted barefoot and wrestled actual crocs.
He also spent a cherished chapter of his youth working as a commercial fisherman alongside his old man after being kicked out of school at the age of 13. “He made me who I am today, I owe him everything,” he says softly, scrolling to show me a photo of his father. He went back to commercial fishing between gigs at various stages in his life.
For fun he took part in crab-tying competitions. For those of you who don’t know what crab tying is, because I didn’t, it’s a legitimate sport up here – made famous by the Lims Hotel in Rapid Creek. Basically, you throw three crabs into a ring and a barefoot participant has to tie them up with twine as quickly as possible.
I could skin and de-bone a horse in about four-and-a-half minutes, or a buffalo in about five or six.
“My brother still holds the world record, actually,” he says. “He can do three crabs in 21.6 seconds … I used to be about that quick too.”
We pull over in the buggy as Frog takes a video call from his son, Ben. As the call connects, Frog struggles to switch the camera to face himself, as his granddaughter waves on the other end. He lights up as he talks to his granddaughter. It’s clear family is everything for Frog.
When I ask him if he’ll ever actually retire now that Ben has bought him out, he stops to think for a moment. “Maybe at the end of this year,” he ponders. “But the day you stop is the day you die … so who knows.”
If I were a betting man, I’d wager there’s next to no chance Frog is hanging up the boots.
One thing Frog told me at various points across our time together is how his kids all spent time with him at work. Whether he was pet-meating, trucking, fishing or laying bitumen. It’s probably part of the reason they’re all the way they are today.
Karen and Frog did something very right. The kids aren’t entitled at all, which isn’t always the case in family businesses. Ben bought his dad out, so Frog works for him. And Rachel told me she didn’t even buy her Prado through the business.
The F&J Bitumen crews work fast, everyone’s got a job, and they communicate with whistles, shouts and hand gestures. Images: Thomas Wielecki
“I’m too independent and I don’t want any handouts,” she tells me when I ask about her new car. “We weren’t handed anything growing up.”
I have no doubt that Rachel will one day run the business, and Karen agrees when I mention it.
When I ask Frog why the kids have to buy their way into the business rather than having it handed to them, he offers a simple, universal truth.
“You want something, you’ve gotta work for it and you’ve gotta pay for it,” he says, matter of factly. “They’ve paid their own way with the business, with their houses, cars, all of it.”
We all want to give our children the world, but tough love is probably the greatest gift you can give. At least that’s what I’m taking away from my time with the Lowerys.
After a few beers and some chilli beef ribs from the family’s Mamma Ducks Meats in Humpty Doo, which have been stinking out the Prado every time we open the esky, the stories get less and less publishable. Rachel tells us we’re up at 3:30am, which feels like another way of saying “go to bed”.
The doctors kept saying ‘we know it was a croc, so you’re going to lose your leg if we don’t treat this properly’. I just kept saying, ‘DOG’.
The next morning we make the run to F&J’s Humpty Doo yard to sit in on a pre-start morning meeting led by Ben Lowery. A young, local bull rider named Ayden – who’s a dead ringer for James Dean – is slouched in a chair, catching a few extra z’s with his Akubra pulled down over his eyes while Ben calmly maps out the day’s plan.
Ben is a heavy diesel mechanic by trade, having cut his teeth working on Kenworths for Gulf Transport, though he admits his loyalties have shifted. “I’m definitely a Mack man, all the way,” he grins, cracking open a Paul’s iced coffee. This family really likes Paul’s iced coffee, if you haven’t gathered, including Rachel who snuck one in during the drive down.
Ben’s crew is using a massive Caterpillar APF500 asphalt paver to pave a yard nearby. Unlike the spray seal method we watched yesterday, the paver lays and compacts fresh, hot asphalt that can then be rolled for a smooth finish.
Young Ayden is awake now, dressed like he came straight from a rodeo as he tracks alongside the machine, wielding a gas blowtorch to keep the asphalt edges piping hot and chemically activated. Other crew members follow closely with hand trowels to smooth out the seams. It’s a beautifully fluid process that leaves behind a dense, jet-black surface that looks like a race track. A traditional roller brings up the rear to compact the final layer down 100mm thick.
While a standard sprayed seal coat generally lasts around five to 10 years, hot-mix asphalt boasts a lifespan 20 to 25 years, Karen tells me. She stands with us on the shoulder, leaning on her walker while keeping a hawkish eye on the entire operation.
“We’ve all done our roller days,” she says with a proud smile, as the team takes turns rolling the hot asphalt.
Floods and extreme weather are a harsh reality in the Territory, but companies like F&J keep the region connected to the outside world. Images: Thomas Wielecki
She explains that when she first made the decision to purchase the expensive CAT paver during the height of Covid, Ben told her she was completely insane and would bankrupt the family. But Karen’s intuition paid off; the first four contracts awarded to F&J after lock-down were asphalt, and the demand has continued to grow.
“It’s definitely a growth area we see,” Ben tells me, without taking his eyes off the crew. “We’ve always done our fair share of asphalt for maintenance sections around town and for big intersections, but we’re doing more than ever lately.”
With a mobile asphalt plant planned, which will run alongside the incoming Katherine facility, F&J is positioned to control their own supply chain, running hot mix out to the most isolated corners of the map. Of course, they’ll continue doing the vital spray seal work too.
“We’re just going to keep supporting the region, because we love what we do,” Karen tells me, now up in the CAT paver. “We just expand as we need to, because we want to keep doing this for as long as we can!”
These guys keep the Territory running, when you think about it. Not just the road trains either, they keep the locals connected too. Kids can get to school, bakeries can sell hot bread, pubs can serve beer and meals to locals who deserve a moment to unwind.
Floods and extreme weather are a harsh reality in the Territory, but companies like F&J keep the region connected to the outside world. An asphalt patch on a remote section of road can mean the difference between a town getting supplies or being cut-off completely. It’s thankless work, really, but the F&J crew do it anyway, and they do it with a smile.
We’re just going to keep supporting the region, because we love what we do.
