The site was selected by Commander Roy Kendall, the head of SIA and was about 3 miles (4.8 km) inland from the town of Cairns,[4] North Queensland.
There were, however, good security conditions for training, until the Cairns district became a very active assembly area for Australian and US troops operating in New Guinea.
This instruction included weapons training, minor tactics, demolitions, folboat operations, signals, codes and ciphers, first aid and unarmed combat.
It was out of the ZES base that the first testing and evaluation of Hoehn military folboats were conducted in the surrounding rivers and out of the port of Cairns.
In the meantime, ZES continued to be used for specialist training for Allied Intelligence Bureau (AIB) personnel in such subjects as jungle foods and advanced demolitions.