In comparison to many other countries, Australia has had a distinctly binary approach to land use and management - private land is for private use, public for public, and never shall they meet. Beyond the barbed wire fence is, for the vast majority of Australians, a foreign country, and binary attitudes to tenure have shaped divorced understandings and discourses of land use. That situation has traceable roots in history, law and culture, but is becoming untenable. The need to manage biodiversity at landscape scale, climate adaptation needs, Indigenous land rights, multiple demands in a full world, mixed public and private benefits, and the sheer efficiency of doing more than one thing in one place - these pressures are challenging binary approaches to tenure and land use.
While the case for managing across tenures and landscapes is now strong, and some bold initiatives under construction, there is a need for greater attention to the historical, cultural and institutional factors that will determine the success or otherwise of these experiments. This paper will survey the roots of this situation, describe some recent initiatives, and consider key challenges that need to be addressed.