anything they’re troubled with. We’re more like a family network at Hardy Fencing.” That family ethos extends to their relationships with subcontractors and suppliers. Hardy Fencing makes a conscious effort to source locally – keeping business within Alice Springs wherever possible – and they treat the contractors who work alongside them as genuine partners rather than transactional vendors. Mark points to Sydney’s own trajectory as a guiding philosophy. “Sydney was a subcontractor and now owns the business, so he knows the whole road,” Mark says. “We’d like to give everyone that opportunity to grow and advance professionally. We try and help them grow wherever they need to, and if the time comes that they get big enough to run their own business, so be it – we try and support them through that process.” That commitment to people and community has not gone unnoticed. Hardy Fencing recently won the Certified Supplier of the Year Award through Supply Nation, a national body that registers and certifies Indigenous businesses. Mark says that award carried particular weight, because they were competing with companies across all of Australia. “It just shows that all the hard work we’ve put into trying to help each individual employee get off the streets or get a job – someone is taking note of what we’re trying to do,” he says. “That means a lot to us.” JUNE 2026
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