From Pilbara to Palawa Country: Why I Built Ningana

By Tientsje Kernan – Founder, Mother, Cultural Voice

When people ask why I started Ningana Services, they often expect a business answer. But the truth is: Ningana was born from lived experience — from fracture, resilience, and a fierce desire to do things differently this time.

I’m a Palawa woman. A mum of three. A daughter, a sister, and someone who’s carried the weight of generational stories — both the joyful ones and the ones that still ache. I was raised on Country, grounded in story and care, and for the last five years I’ve been back in Tasmania — looking after my own parents, my ageing in-laws, and raising our kids while trying to rebuild a life that protects our spirit, not just our finances.

Before this, I lived for over a decade in the far north of Western Australia. My husband worked in Civil concreting in the Pilbara. We had a strong family business, built with our bare hands and late nights. Hot hot unrelenting days in remote locations, three little kids covered in that red dust under those big WA desert skies— until the pandemic pulled it all apart. Like many Indigenous families, we were left carrying the cost of doing everything “the right way” in a system that never really saw us. When the business sale collapsed and the pandemic fallout hit us, we were gutted. But not broken.

So I came home — to Palawa Country — and did what women like us have always done: I started again.

Ningana isn’t just a sanitary bin service. It’s women’s business. It’s a quiet revolution. It's a line in the sand saying, “We can do this with care, dignity, and integrity.”

What makes our service different? We don’t just empty bins — we swap them out, contact-free and discreet. There’s no liner handling, no mess, and no discomfort for staff. It’s fast, clean, professional — and fully compliant. That’s the part that corporate procurement managers will see.

Beneath the surface, there is a broader purpose. Through the Cycle of Care initiative, each contract contributes funding to Indigenous female charities and supports QR-coded cultural storytelling. The bins serve as more than containers for waste—they also function as a platform for sharing stories and promoting respect, with the aim of addressing existing disparities.

And as a woman, as a mother, and as someone who’s rebuilt more than once — I’m not shrinking from this work. This is the legacy I want to leave for my daughters, for my nieces, and for every quiet Palawa girl watching to see how we carry ourselves.

This is women’s business. And I’m not here to shrink it.