A Northern Territory company has built its success on testing roads.
Story By David Hancock
The Northern Territory has a reputation for having good roads. The highways are generally long and straight and well used by road trains, haulage and freight trucks, grey nomads, and a scattered but highly mobile population.
The bush roads may be gravel but they, too, are well constructed: able to withstand intense dry-season traffic, wet-season downpours and the occasional cyclone.
Until World War II, the Territory had less than 500 kilometres of formed road and the main north/south thoroughfare, the Stuart Highway, was aptly known as ‘The Track’. Today, the Territory has more than 36,000km of roads that have been at the core of economic development since self-government in 1978.
Luke Myall and his company HiQa Geotechnical help ensure roads across the Territory come up to Australian standards. HiQa is about quality control of any material used in civil construction, be it soil, rock or concrete. Based in Alice Springs, Katherine and Darwin, the company specialises in testing soil and other construction materials for strength, plasticity and particle size. Employees travel hundreds of thousands of kilometres each year testing roads and road-building material in the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
This Story is from Issue #102
Outback Magazine: Aug/Sept 2015
