The selectors were from every walk of life. There were shop assistants, bank tellers, a plantation manager, drovers, Englishmen, a Scottish champion ploughman and local residents of the Port Curtis District. One of the first properties in the Ubobo area, Portion 115, was taken up by Robert Sydney Davies in 1920. The portion number contained 95 acres. Davies was born in England in 1883, and aged sixteen years, he stowed away in a troopship for South Africa. Once there, Davies joined an Essex Regiment with which he fought during the three years of the Boer War (1899-1901). He remained in the British Army for eight years, serving in India and Burma.