The degradation of land continues on vast areas of privately held land within Australia and, more particularly, Queensland. Land tenure in the state is primarily divided into private freehold ownership and Crown leasehold or pastoral leases. Such leases are finite instruments, which enable the state government to regulate the use of land in accordance with prevailing societal and, increasingly, environmental expectations. In theory, pastoral leases present an ideal mechanism for cooperative and sustainable development by the Queensland agricultural community and the state government. In practice, this is an aspect of environmental policy making which highlights the intrinsic tensions of public approaches to sustainable land management. Generally, the law and the legal instruments that stem from it, reflect the times and the tensions of those times. This is especially so in the case of state leasehold land in Queensland and the origins of the pastoral lease. The pastoral lease began in the first half of the 19th century, as an attempt by the Colonial Office in London to regulate and control the occupation of land by squatters in Australia. This paper will consider the evolution and journey of leasehold tenure in Queensland and examine the continuing tensions between the agricultural community, the state government and its regulators.