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Environmentalists have called for a new property paradigm premised on the idea of land ownership as a delegated responsibility to manage land and resources for the public benefit. An examination of Crown freehold grants from the beginnings of settlement in New South Wales and after the separation of the Colony of Queensland until the 1890s shows that fee simple titles were granted subject to express conditions and reservations designed to reserve useful natural resources to the Crown and to promote public purposes. Over time, legislative regulation of landowners' rights rendered obsolete the use of express conditions and reservations in grants. One result of this change was that the inherently limited nature of fee simple ownership, and the communal obligations to which it is subject, are less transparent than in colonial times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]