AFTER two long, frustrating years of tripping up on Queensland Government red tape, it's a wonder that Steve Lawrie can still find something to grin about. That's how long it's taken for his family to persuade the Department of Natural Resources and Mines to correct the colour on the all-important vegetation maps covering their Central Queensland properties from green to white. It’s a battle which has necessitated countless phone calls, meetings, and even a trawl through the family album in a bid to prove that country on Sebastapol, 50km west of Rockhampton, and on another property near Middlemount, had been previously cleared.

But the beef producer from Powlathanga Station, west of Charters Towers, hasn't lost his sense of the ridiculous.

"It's pretty scientific, isn't it" he said.

"A colour gets incorrectly slapped on a map and it's gospel - then it's hell to get it changed."

The Lawrie family's woes began when they received the maps more than two years ago, with "a couple of thousand" acres of country which had been cleared nearly 20 years ago marked as untouched. When initial complaints proved fruitless, the Lawries dug up old photos, taken when Steve was only 14 years old and showing distinctive landscape features that proved the so-called "green" country and the pulled timber were one and the same. While the department declined their offer to view the photographs, it took until last Friday for Steve's parents Robert and Jenny to finally receive word the Sebastapol maps would be changed. Meanwhile, the Middlemount property has changed from green to pink, despite the family's arguments that the country is plagued with regrowth, not virgin scrub.

"I really don't know where (the department) gets its information from," Mr Lawrie said this week.

"It's not just the initial ruling on map colours, it's also the hassles of pursuing changes. We found we could never speak to the same person twice, the rules kept changing and there's such a huge lag time in following up on requests - it took 15 months for NRM to get us aerial pictures and satellite maps, and when they finally arrived, they were for the wrong country. It took 18 months for the department to send someone out to actually physically inspect the area."

While the Lawries can at last sit down to plan development and maintenance on their properties, two years of toing and froing has cost them dearly.

"We couldn't begin to put a price on what we've lost in land productivity production, what it's cost in all the trips to Rockhampton and in not getting work done on the properties because we were tied up with NRM. I don't even want to think what the price has been."