At this stage he was still an officer in the RAF Reserve, which he relinquished in April 1926, after he had arrived in Australia, leaving a wife and three children in England.

[3] Neale arrived in Australia at Fremantle (the port for Perth) on 3 February 1925 aboard the Orient liner RMS Ormonde.

Charles Kingsford Smith was one of their first employed pilots, but had left to go out on his own, and Neale filled the vacancy in the north-west of Western Australia, where the company was transitioning from the Bristol Tourer to the de Havilland DH.50.

[7] By late 1926 Neale had joined Australian Aerial Services (AAS) managed by Jim Larkin, at Essendon Aerodrome in Melbourne.

In July 1927, Neale was the pilot of the "Satin Bird" on an inland aerial holiday flight carrying a wealthy pastoralist, W.D.

This began a regular association between Oliver and Neale in succeeding years, covering many thousands of miles on charter flights.

[8] Oliver was always on the lookout for grazing land, and one flight over the Simpson Desert proved that the sand dunes ran for hundreds of miles in a south-easterly direction.

[5] Neale remained on that run until he went south to join Donald Mackay for a series of survey flights covering the greater part of central and western Australia.

In January 1933 while flying between King Island and Melbourne, the aircraft suffered a failure of two engines forcing Frank Neale to land on the ocean and taxi 25 miles to the beach.

[13] In the intervening years between the Mackay aerial survey flights, Neale was kept busy flying a de Havilland Dragonfly owned by Harry McEvoy, the owner of Fostar Shoe Enterprises.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Neale joined the Royal Australian Air Force Reserve (RAAF) as a flying officer at No.