Umanity Group

Life on a rocky shore comes with a changing waterline. Between the high- and low-tide marks, animals are submerged as the tide rises and exposed to the air as it falls. Those attached to the rock have to cope with both, right where they are.

Working on Country takes preparation, patience and a fair bit of walking. Our heritage and environmental teams know it well. So do our lawyers.Time with Traditional Owners helps us understand the places we’re advising on. We bring that understanding back into the office and into the work that follows. Occasionally, we bring back a photo that explains the appeal better than we could.

Good advice starts out here. On Country with Traditional Owners, working through the questions that matter: what needs protecting, where we need to look closer and what the findings mean for the proposed work. We carry that understanding through to the maps, reports and practical advice our clients use to make decisions. That’s the work behind the Umanity name.

One photograph. Two landscapes. Twenty thousand years apart. Today we see sheltered water, rocky islands and the Southern Ocean. But during the Last Glacial Maximum, sea level around Australia was approximately 120 metres lower. Much of the water in this photograph would have been dry land. Today’s islands may have risen as granite hills across an exposed coastal landscape, with the shoreline much farther away. Aboriginal people had already been living across this continent for tens of thousands of years. As the ice melted and the sea rose, coastlines moved inland—submerging pathways, gathering places and cultural landscapes that may still survive beneath the water. That is why archaeologists do not see the coastline as a fixed boundary. We ask what the landscape looked like, how people moved through it and what stories its modern form may conceal. The sea changed the view. It did not erase the story.

Heritage isn't always spectacular. Sometimes it's found in the subtle details that many people would simply walk past. A culturally modified tree is more than timber. It's evidence of a continuing connection between people and Country, preserved in the landscape itself. Understanding places like this takes careful observation, cultural knowledge and respect. That's why documenting them properly matters.

Perspective. It's easy to feel small in landscapes like this. Perhaps that's exactly the point. Working on Country reminds us that our role isn't to leave our mark—it's to understand the ones already there.