Ceduna’s First Barber Shop in 50 Years Opens Under Aboriginal Ownership

A town service returns to the main street

For Ceduna, the opening of a barber shop after a 50-year gap fills a local service need. For brothers Tjerayh and Tjeryan Coleman-Ware, it brings their homegrown barbering into a shop on the town’s main street—and makes it the only 100 per cent Aboriginal-owned and operated business there. Those facts give the shop two roles: it offers a service residents have lacked locally, and it gives the brothers’ family trade a visible place in the town centre. The move from a shed to a storefront is a practical change, but it also makes their work easier for people passing through the main street to find.

A half-century without a barber is a long gap for a routine service. Residents who wanted a haircut had to make do with other options, though the account doesn’t specify what those were. The brothers’ shop now gives customers a local place to go, built by people whose connection to the town isn’t incidental: they grew up there and learned the trade together.

A trade that started at home

Tjerayh began cutting hair at 15, when he and his brothers took turns trimming one another because they had no barber to go to. He found he enjoyed the work, especially the effect a haircut could have on a customer’s confidence. Starting with family gave him a chance to practise, but the appeal went beyond learning how to handle clippers. He noticed that people could leave the chair feeling better about how they looked.

“I just like seeing someone come in and their hair might be all over the place and maybe not feeling too good about how they look and all that,” he said. “And then after leaving the chair you know, they feel better about themself.”

That response points to a familiar part of barbering: the service is hands-on and visible, with the result arriving before the customer leaves. For a small town, a local barber can also become a regular point of contact. Here, the brothers’ work grew out of those everyday interactions, first among family and then with other young people in Ceduna.

His first setup was a shed at the family home. Younger brother Tjeryan watched him work and eventually picked up the clippers too. A home setup gave the brothers a place to learn through practice, although it was a modest beginning by any measure. The work was informal at first, shaped by the people around them and the demand they saw.

Tjeryan’s route into the trade came from watching his older brother turn an interest into a practical skill. The influence was direct, and the family shed served as his first classroom. “Just seeing him cut hair, makes me want to try and I guess that's what got me in,” Tjeryan said. A shared interest became a shared trade.

Training turned the hobby into a business

A formal path opened in 2024, when Tjerayh learned that Ceduna Aboriginal Corporation was offering locals a Certificate III in Beauty and Barbering. The brothers completed the course together in 2025 and received their qualifications in 2026. That sequence marks a change in the work: what began as informal practice between siblings now rests on training and recognised qualifications. The course gave them a route from an existing interest to opening a business.

“We pretty much flew through everything as quick as we could,” Tjerayh said. The remark conveys their eagerness, but the qualification matters for another reason: it formalised skills they’d already begun developing at home. Training can help turn a personal ability into a service customers can seek out with confidence. In this case, the brothers took that next step together.

When a shop became available for lease two months ago, they decided to take it. The decision was a test of whether the family operation could work in a public, commercial setting, where a shop has to meet customer expectations day after day. The response has encouraged them, Tjeryan said: “It's good, a lot of people showing love, the community showing love, it's nice running a shop in the town that you grew up in I guess.”

Family business, local ties

The shop’s family links extend beyond the brothers. A younger cousin helps sweep after school, while earrings made by their mother and younger sister are displayed for sale at the counter. These details show how the business sits within a wider family effort, with relatives contributing in different ways. They also give the storefront a character rooted in the people who run it.

There’s a difference between a business that opens in a town and one whose early customers have watched it take shape. Local customer Daniel Newchurch-Lawrie has been coming to the brothers since their early cuts. He remembers the other boys asking Tjerayh for trims ahead of football season, as the informal shed operation grew more skilled and regular. That history gives the shop a customer base with memories attached to it, not just a new sign on the main street.

That history gives the new storefront a clear local foundation: a skill learned between brothers, developed through training, and brought into a town where customers had been asking for cuts for years. What this means for you, if you live nearby, is straightforward: there’s now a barber shop in Ceduna with ties to its customers that reach back to the shed. The numbers here are underwhelming only if you measure a small business by scale; its significance is more local than that. This is more significant than it looks.

What the storefront changes

Opening on the main street makes the brothers’ work more visible and gives a homegrown trade a permanent public address. (And this is the part most people overlook.) A storefront can make a service easier to find, but it also asks the owners to sustain a business beyond the circle of friends and family who first supported them. That shift takes consistency. The account offers an early sign of community backing, while the longer test will be whether the shop can keep serving customers over time.

If you're working in this space, the brothers’ path is a useful reminder that training and local demand can meet at a practical scale. Their story doesn’t claim to solve every service gap in Ceduna, or to promise a particular business outcome. It shows what can happen when a skill develops close to home, gains formal recognition, and finds a place where customers can walk in. A barber shop, with roots in a family shed.