Syd's brave actions led the way at Gallipoli

SYD Davies was one of the first 12 men to land in Turkey during the Gallipoli campaign, he captured the first Turkish officer and he ended up in Ubobo.

A number of returned soldiers from the First World War took up farming in the Ubobo area around 1919.

Many of them eventually sold and moved on as the farms were too small to be viable.

One of those farms was taken up by Davies, who was on the first boat to land at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915.

He was in the 9th Battalion and was one of a dozen men sent ahead to land and find a way up the steep slopes for the disembarking troops.

Mr Davies fought at Gallipoli from April to November, when he was shot in the head and lost an eye.

During that time he was credited with capturing the first Turkish officer in the Gallipoli campaign.

Mr Davies had a colourful childhood.

When he was 15 he ran away from home in London and took a ship to South Africa.

While he was there the Boer War broke out and he joined the British Army, even though by then he was only 16.

He remained in the army for seven or eight years before he again began his adventurous wanderings.

When the First World War broke out he was in the Solomon Islands but sailed to Brisbane and enlisted, this time in the Australian 9th Battalion.

In the years preceding the First World War, Davies was a rubber plantation manager for Burns Philp in Choisuel in the British Solomon Islands. He also oversaw the Japanese pearl divers working for Burns Philp.

Davies enlisted on October 5, 1914, joining the Queensland 9th Battalion.

The 9th Battalion which served in the First World War with honour was the first to leave Queensland and among the first to land Australian troops at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915.

Davies, as a member of a boat carrying a dozen men, went ashore ahead of the main force.

His son, Hector, restored the original home of his father, as a monument to him and other soldier settlers who went to Ubobo in 1920-21.

The Soldier Settler House is a high-set, timber building constructed in 1920, on property owned by RS Davies.

An ex-serviceman from the First World War, Davies had acquired title to Portion 115 (as it was known) under the Ubobo Soldier Settlement Scheme.

In the 1960s, the Davies family purchased Lot 114, formerly Portion 114, on which there was another soldier settler's house.

Two other well-known soldier settlers who took up blocks at Ubobo were William and Albert Streeter.

They were the sons of William Streeter who found a huge 96oz nugget of gold at Cania in 1879.