Orenda is an event full of adventure, mystery and intrigue. It is set in a fictional, alternate history version of 1869. A world of expeditions and colonial wars. Of industry, poverty and social injustice. But also of great discoveries and people striving for a better society. And a world of Orenda, a new fuel, the capabilities of which seem endless.
On the way to Melbourne, an emergency signal reaches the S.S. Great Britain and the airship d’Onvermoeide: the Krakatau volcano has exploded, with disastrous consequences. A tsunami of more than thirty meters high has engulfed Java and Sumatra and the ash cloud of the volcano has colored the sky black. Sea and air traffic is diverted to nearby ports. The S.S. Great Britain and d’Onvermoeide leave for the harbor of Perth, Australia and are taken in at Fremantle Prison, now a re-education colony (“Institution zur Umerziehung von Abschaum”) under the inspirational leadership of Agathe Knüppelkuh, the daughter of a nobleman from Darmstadt.
Life in Fremantle Prison is heavy: the barren Australian soil does not want to grow, the supply of goods from Europe arrives slowly; and only through hard work and cooperation have the prisoners survived. There was hope for a moment when doctor Frederick Klaus joined the colony, followed shortly thereafter by the brilliant inventor Edgar Doig, who provided the prison with some modernities (especially mechanical men, called ‘automatons’), but both are affected by fate. Klaus died of acute appendicitis in the winter of 1870 and Doig did not die long before the arrival of the expedition members, caught in one of his own machines. The other prisoners and Doig’s wife question the accident; the mechanic was a careful man who knew his machines through and through. And where did the drawings of all his inventions go?
With the help of the detainees and letters of Moondyne Joe – an infamous thief – the expedition members follow the trail from Alexandrine Tinne to Cornelius’ Dream, a small estate located near Fremantle Prison. Here they descend into Mulka’s Cave, according to the stories of the local indigenous people the domain of the Rainbow Snake, a mythical figure that connects everything, the ‘everywhen’. Moondyne Joe warns the expedition members that the cave cannot be lightly entered: it is a sacred place where people come and share stories from the beginning of time. Whoever wants to penetrate the heart of the cave (as Alexandrine apparently intended), must honor the local customs and walk the story rooms, at one with his tribe, with himself and the ancestors.
The expedition members do not have much time to think about their discovery in the cave: lieutenant general De Brauw has been busy recruiting new recruits for the KNIL (the Royal Dutch East Indies Army). He has convinced the majority of the expedition members to head with him to Batavia, Java, to represent the country’s interests there. And so the S.S. Great Britain continues its journey.
