Born in Surry Hills, an inner-city suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Meares was the son of William Meares, a manager in the insurance industry who played two first-class matches in New Zealand for Otago during the 1870s.

[1] Frank Meares emigrated to Western Australia sometime in the late 1890s, and took up playing with East Fremantle in the Perth district cricket competition, leading the club's batting averages during the 1897–98 season.

[3] He was consistently regarded as one of the club's best batsmen, and in one match during the 1898–99 season scored 110 runs from a team total of 170 runs, an innings which led The Inquirer & Commercial News to describe him as the "most artistic batsman in the colony".

However, in November 1899, shortly after the season commenced, Meares returned to New South Wales for unexplained reasons.

[11] In the first of these matches, against Victoria, he recorded his highest first-class score (and only half-century), an innings of 55 runs.