In 1985, Ansell borrowed money and secured a pastoral lease in northern Arnhem Land. He started up Melaleuca, a cattle station east of Darwin, near Kakadu National Park, named after the "Melaleuca" paper bark trees which dot the landscape. The Ansells built their homestead on the station, not far from the Mary River. In the 1980s, he found himself in a protracted dispute with the Northern Territory government over the controversial Bovine Brucellosis and Tuberculosis Eradication Campaign (BTEC). To comply with BTEC, Ansell was forced to kill 3,000 head of feral buffalo on his property. He had originally planned to capture and domesticate the animals, creating a pastoral herd that would have afforded his family a comfortable lifestyle. Arguing that money spent on the BTEC program "would be better spent on research on AIDS," Ansell considered the destruction of the animals an outrageous waste of good livestock.