Sir Alfred Metcard
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Sir Alfred John Wilhelm Metcard (November 1, 1770 – November 23, 1871) was an explorer, entrepreneur and folk hero of almost mythical and unbelievable proportions who is widely blamed for creating the Victorian public transport system, linking the city of Melbourne by train some years before it had actually been settled. Legend has it that Metcard mapped out and then travelled the enormous distances required by such a system by himself, crawling through often treacherous bushland with a large piece of wood, flattening the ground to lay the tracks.
Metcard, seven feet tall, crawled as far as Stony Point through land that was, at the time, inhospitable and often unseen by white settlers. It is thought by some that the noise and bluster caused by such a large man forcing himself along kilometres of ground with a large plank he used to crush anything in his path was one of the earliest contributors to the bunyip myth.
Metcard succeeded in his desire to lay out the entire rail system, and Melbourne's rail network still runs along more or less the same path today, some two hundred years later. The current ticketing system, the Metcard, bears his name, though few Melburnians would recognise its significance.
Metcard died shortly after his one-hundred-and-first birthday, seemingly stabbed to death in an argument over his proposal to build a widespread rail network in what is now New Guinea.
His remains were shipped back to Melbourne and buried quietly and anonymously. Metcard, a devout Christian, staunchly believed in the concept of bodily resurrection. He asked to be buried in a prone stance so that, upon the second coming, he could quickly and easily extricate himself.
Today, Metcard is largely unknown and unremembered in the city he helped to found, but his legacy lives on, with his ghost said to be responsible for the outside-the-MCG-stoppage; because he once had a smoko there whilst paving the tracks.
