Christopher Hugh Neal (born 1946) is an Australian musician, songwriter, record producer and television and film music composer. His scores include Buddies, Bodyline, The Shiralee, Turtle Beach and Farscape. He has also scored and written songs for children's series including Johnson and Friends, Lift-Off, Crash Zone and Noah and Saskia. Neal has won several AGSC and APRA awards for his work and was awarded Best Original Music Score at the 1985 AFI Awards for his contribution to the film score for 'Rebel'. Some of Neal's frequent collaborators have included Denny Lawrence, Bob Ellis, George Ogilvie, Matt Carroll, and Patricia Edgar. Early life and career Neal was born in 1946 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He studied AMEB grades in classical piano and music theory to the age of sixteen. He attended North Sydney Boys High School and in 1964, began an arts degree at Sydney University with majors in music and Indonesian/Malayan studies. During his Uni years, he gigged around Sydney with rock bands - The Showmen and The Powerhouse. In 1968, he worked extensively on the soundtrack of the Anglo/Australian feature film, Age of Consent with Peter Sculthorpe, writing and producing the majority of the incidental score. On the eve of completing his degree, Neal suffered a skull fracture during a game of rugby. The resultant Inertia and Tinnitus caused massive hearing loss and sleeplessness which prevented him sitting his final exams. Following a brief convalescence, he joined "The Alpha-Omega Revue" and headed off to the Vietnam War zone, entertaining US troops for several months in 1968-9. While in Vietnam, he began writing what was intended to be the world's first rock musical, "Man-Child". However, by the time he had returned to Australia, the American show 'Hair' was already in the headlines. Nevertheless, he packaged the show and presented it at the Sydney Showground in the world's first "bubble" air-inflated theatre (financed by his brother, developer James Neal). The season was cut short when a freak storm picked up a design fault in the plastic theatre and destroyed it. So the whole company (25 people in all) set off on a national capital city tour. The tour was successful, breaking box office records in several cities and a "Man-Child" soundtrack album was recorded for the then fledgling M7 record company. This caused Neal to turn his attentions for a time to the development of his skills as a