Bob Blair was a soldier, so the young Wayne moved around. While Blair was still young, his father was posted to Woodside in South Australia, then when Wayne was a teenager his family was sent to Rockhampton. In Rockhampton he excelled at cricket and rugby, then later became interested in acting and dancing at school. Blair had a job as a tour guide at Rockhampton's Dreamtime Cultural Centre, where he was also one of the Dancers. He went on to do a marketing degree at CQUniversity Australia, though his elective subjects included Comic Drama and Australian Drama. He briefly went to Sydney to play rugby league for the Canterbury Bulldogs under-21s. After a failed audition for NIDA in 1992, he eventually did a three-year course at the Queensland University of Technology in acting.