Whatever the weather, RJ's owner Richard McArthur cooks burgers and pours coffee for cabbies, drunks and cops in one of Canberra's last old-style food vans.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
He started working at the van when he was 17, back when it was owned by his father Robert, and 21 years later Richard says he still doesn't mind the long hours and hard work.
While he's supplying potato scallops and jam doughnuts to bleary-eyed night-shift workers and the helplessly inebriated, Richard gets to see a whole other side to Canberra.
"Generally [I see] people are out and they're relaxed. People that are working in offices and stuff during the day, or getting lunch during the day, they're in work mode. I see them when they're themselves," he said.
"That's the way I've always seen it. More interesting people are more interesting at night because they're them - although that's not always a good thing!"
To those driving by it mightn't look like much - housed in an old caravan complete with dents and fading paintwork. But to hungry, cold Canberrans on the night shift it's a little slice of heaven.
Parked in a car park just next to the Southern Cross Club in Woden, RJ's is the last food van left in Woden and possibly the oldest left anywhere in Canberra.
It's been RJ's since it was bought by Robert James McArthur in 1993, Richard's dad and the van's namesake. It's been in Woden for more than 35 years in total.
As Richard talks, three cab drivers come by for burgers, drinks and coffee - it's a long-standing tradition at the food van that taxi drivers, cops, security guards and ambulance drivers get their coffee for free.
"You get lots of taxi drivers, police, ambulance, firies. Sometimes they come for a feed, sometimes they just drive through," his father Robert said. "At 4am you hopefully get happy drunks because the Southern Cross closes at 4am and they'll walk up."
While other vans, such as Checkers in Belconnen, have closed down due to lack of business or government planning difficulties, RJ's has kept on going with its loyal supporters: the car group RushHour and dozens of hungry, tired taxi drivers and emergency services workers.
Although they've never talked about it in detail, Richard says the discount for the cabbies can be mutually beneficial.
"[It] makes them think of us when someone hops in the car and says, 'Take us somewhere to get something to eat'," he says. "There was even a cab driver who was a friend of ours, he used to give them an option, back when Marty's was still open.
"They'd say, 'Take us to somewhere to get something to eat', and he'd say, 'You have two choices: you can either go to Marty's or RJ's. If you go to Marty's, I'll leave the meter running. If you go to RJ's, I'll turn it off'."
Richard says he believes there is a market in Canberra for more food vans like his - just days before the Brod Dogs van opened up for business in Belconnen.
"I think there's only me and one other in Canberra," Richard told me, while making a taxi driver's burger. "G-Spot in Gungahlin is the only other one that I know of that's still going... So many of them have gone for various reasons. I've just sort of stuck it out."
But he has no idea how much longer RJ's will be at its Woden location, as the government land it sits on could fall prey to developers at any time.
"I could be forced to either try and find a place to go or close up and find something else to do. It all depends - with any luck they won't develop anything in the future," he said.