After serving in France during World War I, Errol Coote worked as a journalist in Sydney. He was one of Australia's pioneer aviators and piloted the reconnaissance plane in the famous 1930 expedition to Central Australia in search of Lasseter's Reef. He had met
Harold Bell Lasseter in Sydney, and helped form the company that financed the expedition to search for the reef Lasseter claimed to have found. He later wrote the story of the expedition in
Hell's Airport.
