In 1981 Mount Isa Junior Cricket President Sam Logan went further than any before or since to prepare the youngsters of Mount Isa for representative matches. He hired ex-New Zealand opening bowler Bob Blair to come and tutor the cities promising Cricketers.

Blair was 50 years old so past his prime when he arrived but his knowledge was soaked up and several players went onto achieve North Queensland representation.

 In his prime Blair was a genuine fast bowler and played 19 Tests for New Zealand between 1953 and 1964, taking 43 wickets at an average of 35.23. Unfortunately he never quite carried his enormous success for Wellington in the Plunket Shield (the equivalent of Australia’s Sheffield Shield) into the Test arena.

 Domestically he was a legend in Wellington and was a mainstay of the attack for well over a decade, often bowling in tandem with Bruce Morrison who later became his business partner.

 Raised in Petone his ability was recognised early and as a nineteen-year-old he debuted for Wellington at Christmas 1951. He captured 330 wickets at an amazing average of 15.16 and helped them with the Plunkett Shield four times.

 In his best season (1956–57), he took 46 wickets in five matches at an average of 9.47, twice taking nine wickets in an innings. The next season, he took 34 at 11.20 and in a trial match at the end of the season took five wickets in each innings for North Island against South Island.

Chosen to tour England he had a dismal tour taking only three wickets in three Tests, at an average of 70. Six years later when England toured New Zealand Blair faced them and scored his highest Test score of 64 not out to top score in his side’s first innings total of 194.

It was the only time he scored a half century and because of it he holds the record for the lowest career batting average by a Test player who scored a 50 in an innings, with 6.75.

He added a further 42 wickets when he had a season with the fledging Central Districts side. He was only medium height and slim of build but hie had a long, smooth run-up and generated extreme pace with a fast arm action.

Though he was at his fastest throughout the 1950s it was when he slowed and added guile that he first won the Winsor Cup for the best New Zealand first class bowler in 1962. He made it a hat trick by winning it the following two years.

Test opener John Reid was Wellington’s captain but, in his absence, led the side and did so in his final game for Wellington against Otago in February 1965.

Overall he took 129 first-class for New Zealand with his best 6-19 against Cambridge University on the tour of England. Though representing the university it was full of talent with future England captain Ted Dexter in the side as well as the future esteemed Cricket journalist Henry Blofeld, who opened the batting.

 Though he was in and out of the national team he toured South Africa in 1952/53 and England in 1958.

Blair was living in Queensland when Sam Logan brought him to town but after his stint in Mount Isa he left to coach Lancashire club Widnes. In the late 1990s he coached Zimbabwe provincial side Matabeleland before returning for a second spell with Widnes.

He finished his coaching career in Ireland and retired in England where he resided when he passed away in June this year on his 94^th birthday.

He achieved his best Test match figures of 7 for 142, in what turned out to be his last Test. It was against South Africa at Auckland in 1963–64 but it was a Test match in South Africa a decade before that Blair is famous for.

The second Test of New Zealand’s tour in Johannesburg began on Christmas Eve with Christmas Day a rest day. That same day New Zealand suffered the country’s worst rail accident just after 10:00pm in what became known as the Tangiwai disaster.

The accident occurred when a railway bridge over the Whangaehu River collapsed beneath an express passenger train at Tangiwai on New Zealand’s North Island. The locomotive and first six carriages derailed into the river, killing 151 people.

The express train left Wellington at 3:00pm that day headed to Auckland with four first-class and five second-class carriages as well as a Guard's van and postal van.

Approaching the bridge over the Whangaehu River at Tangiwai the driver, either after seeing passerby Cyril Ellis standing by the track waving a torch or seeing the condition of the bridge shut off steam and initiated an emergency air brake application.

His fireman shut off the oil supply valve for the fire but their actions could not stop the train from running onto the bridge, which collapsed. The locomotive, its oil tender and the five second-class carriages plunged into the flooded river.

The leading first-class carriage teetered over the edge before its coupling to the rest of the train still on the track snapped. The carriage rolled down into the river as well while the remaining three first-class carriages, guard's van and postal van remained on the track.

While the first-class carriage hung precariously over the edge Ellis and the train’s guard William Inglis entered the carriage in an attempt to save passengers. They were inside when the coupling snapped and with the assistance of passenger John Holman, smashed a window and helped the passengers get out of the carriage.

Their actions saved 23 of the carriage’s 24 occupants with the sole loss a girl who was trapped in her seat and drowned.

Shortly after the accident, soldiers from Waiouru Army Camp, radio operators from Irirangi Naval Communications Station and workmen from the Waiouru Ministry of Works (MOW) camp arrived at the scene.

By midnight, the first survivors had been admitted into the Waiouru Camp Hospital, and by 4 a.m. the following day (Christmas morning) the first bodies had been transported to a makeshift mortuary at the nearby Waiouru Army Camp.

151 of the 285 passengers and crew were killed with twenty bodies, presumed to have been carried 120 km downriver to the sea, never found.

The subsequent board of inquiry found that the accident was caused by the failure of the tephra dam holding back nearby Mount Ruapehu's Crater Lake, This created a rapid mudflow (a lahar) in the Whangaehu River which destroyed one of the bridge piers at Tangiwai only minutes before the train reached the bridge.

For their actions, Ellis and Holman received the George Medal in the 1954 New Zealand bravery awards. Inglis and a passing traveler, Arthur Dewar Bell, both received the British Empire Medal for actions that saved fifteen lives. 

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip were on their first royal tour of New Zealand when the disaster occurred. The queen finished her Christmas broadcast from Auckland with a message of sympathy to the people of New Zealand and Prince Phillip attended a state funeral for many of the victims.

As a result an early warning system was installed and in 2007 these worked as planned when a lahar of similar magnitude to the one from 1953 occurred. The systems stopped trains and motorists at Tangiwai before the lahar hit. And the newer bridges held up, allowing trains to resume operation after inspection.

When Blair proposed to his girlfriend Nerissa Love he used the money for the tour of South Africa to buy her an engagement ring. Their engagement was met with hostility by her parents but after seeing a gravestone of a young women who died at 21 she decided life was too short.

The pair exchanged letters while he was on tour and on Christmas Eve he sent flowers to her while in South Africa. After a fight with her mother Nerissa decided to  run away from home to Auckland and stay with friends until they can get married.

Her friend worked on the train and snuck her on and it was while on the train she wrote a letter to Bob.

When Blair awoke on Christmas Day in South Africa it was too the news his fiancé Nerissa was one of those to lose their life. It was announced he would take no further part in the game and when the second day commenced on Boxing Day he initially stayed back at ​the team hotel to ‌grieve.

New Zealand batsman Bert Sutcliffe had earlier gone to hospital after ‌taking numerous blows from the cricket ball while ​batting. He was bandaged around his head and was walking off the pitch at the fall of the ninth wicket when Blair appeared from the pavilion.

The crowd was initially stunned into silence and then rose to give Blair a standing ovation. The pair added 33 runs for the 10th wicket with Sutcliffe striking three sixes and Blair one from a single eight-ball over before Blair was dismissed for ⁠six.

South Africa won the match by 132 runs but Blair’s courage has been recognised in many ways.

A book about the incident, What Are You Doing Out Here: Heroism and Distress at a Cricket Test by Norman Harris, was published in 2010 with Blair writing the foreword.

50 years after the tragedy a Wellington production company began writing a telefeature called Tangiwai. When people caught wind of it they were inundated the producers with remarkable tales of survival and terrible tragedies from the disaster.

Co-writers and producers Donna Malane and Paula Boock had the difficult tasks of selecting just one story to represent the tragedy. Both had grown up with their parents' accounts of that fateful eve, sitting helplessly in their living rooms as the names of the dead were read over the radio.

Malane told how it had such a profound effect on them that every Christmas her family would remember the event.

When she was discussing the disaster with Boock, who grew up in an Otago cricketing family, he relayed the story about Blair. How he had lost his fiancee in the crash but went on to bat for his country in a test match against South Africa in Johannesburg.

"It's an outrageous thing to do, so we were a bit nervous, we thought he might put us through our paces, and you know, he's a fast bowler so he has that side to him, he's a tough guy. But he was incredibly generous with his story," Malane said.

While the play focused on Blair's contribution to New Zealand's cricketing history, Malane and Boock's telefeature is a love story. They made sure they were in close contact with the remaining members of Nerissa's family through the writing and filming process.

Filming largely took place around her home of Petone and where she was buried with her family spending time on set and working as extras.

Filming finished just before Christchurch's devastating earthquake on 22 February, 2011. There was a similar death toll to the 1953 rail crash and rather than overshadow the historic disaster, it highlighted the importance of taking the time to remember.

"It's a different era now where we are being asked to remember the people who died in Christchurch. In the '50s it was more that you were expected not to talk about it, or dwell on it, you were expected to move on." Explained Malane.

In recognition of the disaster itself, and the effect that it had on that Test match since 2024 New Zealand and South Africa have played Test series for the Tangiwai Shield.

“The story of Bob Blair and the Tangiwai rail disaster has left an indelible mark on cricket in both New Zealand and South Africa,” NZC’s interim chief executive, Graham Parks, said in a statement.

“The courage and camaraderie shown during the ‌second Test in South Africa in 1953 and in the years ​that followed epitomise everything that is great about sport.

“To have been able to honour that ⁠inspirational story with the introduction of the Tangiwai Shield ⁠in 2024 was both poignant and will ensure the legacy of Bob Blair lives on.”