[4] Promoted to paymaster and inspector, he was posted to supervise various minor gold rushes throughout the colony.

In 1862, he returned to Bendigo and was promoted to superintendent, running the police station there, and later the Bourke and Geelong districts.

Chomley volunteered to help pursue the Kelly gang, but was instead sent to Brisbane to recruit Australian native police for a permanent detachment of Aboriginal trackers in Victoria.

The commission claimed the career of the chief commissioner, Frederick Standish, with Chomley considered as his replacement along with fellow superintendents Charles Nicolson, Frank Hare, John Sadleir and Frederick Winch—however in 1881, the inquiry ended the police careers of the other candidates as well, who were forced to retire as police magistrates.

Chomley, who had been in Queensland during the Kelly affair was the only candidate with his career untarnished by the Longmore commission's findings, and in March 1881, new premier Bryan O'Loghlen appointed him as acting chief commissioner—the first career police officer to hold the role—with a directive to report on his ideas for re-organising the force.