Evandale plane crash still haunts Scott Blakely, but closure found three decades later

On September 17, 1993 Mr Blakely was one of nine passengers onboard a Piper Navajo aircraft bound for Launceston Airport.

The flight was one of three chartered by members of Lyndale Football Club for an end of season trip.

At 7.45pm that night, the plane was on its approach to the airport when it hit power lines and crashed in a nearby field, bursting into flames.

Six of the passengers died in the crash - brothers Mark and Lance Baxter, Glenn King, Dean Prendergast, Scott Young, and Kevin Connor - making it one of the deadliest in Tasmania's history.

Mr Blakely, pilot Roger Rodrigues, Alan Fisher and Kenny Stewart survived.

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Apart from attending coronial inquest hearings, Mr Blakely had not revisited Tasmania since the crash, but on September 17, 2023 he returned to the site for a service marking 30 years since that fateful night.

He did not remember much from the crash - just seeing lights flashing past the plane window and then nothing before waking up outside the plane covered in firefighting foam.

He did, however, remember what he was wearing that night - a pair of white, black and pink Nike Air Max trainers - which eyewitnesses Dianne Rigby and Bill Allison remembered seeing in the wreckage.

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"Dianne was telling my mate how she had seen this guy in the back of the plane kicking and punching the back window. He had a white pair of runners on." Mr Blakely said.

"My mate brought me over and said to listen to her story. When she told me the story, I said that guy was me.

"She just broke down and cried, put her head in her hands. Every time she looked at me she just cried and just couldn't believe for 30 years she'd been carrying that around with her. She thought I died in the plane."

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Mr Blakley had burns to about a third of his body, which he sustained trying to rescue his teammates, and several broken bones - spending months in hospital and rehabilitation to fix the physical injuries.

Even after those had healed, it was a long road to mending the psychological scars - it took him years to be comfortable wearing shorts and a T-shirt - but there was also survivor's guilt.

"I paid for one of my best mates to go on board," Mr Blakely said.

"He had a little baby girl, moved into a new house. He was my next-door neighbour for nearly 20 years.

"I said to him, 'I've already paid for you, you're coming'. He came along, he sat beside me. He died."

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Mr Blakely said he found talking about the crash to whoever would listen helped, however returning to the site of the crash and hearing the stories of those who witnessed it was the missing piece of the puzzle.

"I felt a little bit of closure or relief, a bit of weight that's been lifted. I've felt that way since I've been back," he said.

"I thought it would be the opposite, revisiting where my life changed forever when I was 21 ... I just feel a little bit more like I can breathe again.

"I also felt a bit of a relief that I was giving something back to those people that were scarred for life too."

A coronial inquest into the crash found pilot inexperience was one of the major factors, and Mr Allison, Ms Rigby, Mark Cubit, Paul Thompson and Mark Rothwell were all commended for assisting in the aftermath.

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