DARWIN to ADELAIDE 13⁰ S, 131⁰ E – 35⁰ S, 138⁰ E - Ch 14

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KULO LUNA - Grace and beauty, these giant fins propel the whale at considerable speed over thousands of miles from feeding to breeding grounds.

For 2020, the Kulo Luna story is undergoing conversion for the possibility of publication of a Special Edition graphic novel, by artists in the Sussex region of the UK.

This edition is condensed for a quicker visual experience with 5 chapters as 24 scenes:-

Steve and Charley surveyed the podium and the end points of the start line being built for the forthcoming World Solar Challenge. 

   “I wonder if this event will be the same again after the boat race.” Charley frowned, 

   “Just a little confusing I’d say - boss. The World Solar Navigation Challenge is an accurate description of the event – the WSNC. A bunch of boats are literally going to race around the World.” She continued, “The WSC is a bunch of cars driving 3,000 miles across Australia’s belly. The only reason ‘World’ is in the title, is because entrants come from all over the world.” Steve jumped in, 

   “But then, there are other long distance land events with entrants from all over the world.” 

   “True Blue,” said Charley with an Aussie twang. It was not often she was so opinionated. Steve smiled, secretly impressed.

The port of Darwin is the state capital of the Northern Territory, founded in 1860 as Palmerston and re-named after Charles Darwin the renowned English naturalist; Port Darwin in 1911. This sparsely populated city is the starting line for the famous World Solar Challenge or WSC, a race for solar powered cars along the Stuart Highway, some 3,000 miles, ending in Adelaide, the state capital of South Australia.

The reporters climbed into a dusty black SUV and headed for the Mayor’s offices in City Hall. 

   “Did you know solar racing began as a sports in the 1980’s with this race for cars across the Stuart Highway, through: Katherine, Tennant Creek, Alice Springs, Woomera and Port Pirie, ending in Adelaide. Contestants battled sand storms, brushwood, road trains (those large Australian trucks pulling several trailers) and each other across miles of unmade desert roads.” 

   “Yuh” replied Charley, we’re here.” They climbed out of the SUV and looked at the buildings façade. 

  “Not as grand as Melbourne, but charming in its own way.” They entered the reception hall to see a historic picture display of the event that had made Darwin famous.......

Over the years the race became popular with engineering students the world over, attracting high street names like Panasonic, Hitachi, General Motors and Honda. Other countries introduced their own local version of the WSC race, including the American Solar Challenge (ASC) and the London to Brighton solar run and a solar car event in Hawaii.

Boating enthusiasts began circuit racing and the electric water speed record crept up from 50 to 60 miles per hour. Then in 2006 a catamaran called Sun21 crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Although this journey took several months, the accomplishment proved solar power was viable as marine transport. History was repeating itself, where Southampton University had crossed the English Channel in a solar powered catamaran, then came the Atlantic and finally a solar powered circumnavigation with skipper Raphael Domjan in PlanetSolar in 2012.

So too the intrepid Frenchman, Louis Bleriot had crossed the Channel in 1909 from Dover to Calais in 37 minutes, then came Charles Lindbergh, with his Atlantic crossing in Spirit of St Louis from New York to Paris in 1927 which flight took 33 hours and 30 minutes. This crossing fired the imagination of air operators, eventually leading to Panam, BA, Quantas and other air operators offering scheduled flights to shrink the globe. But at a price. Air Miles became Carbon Miles in reality, that would speed up global warming, as holiday makers basked in the sunshine destinations, they were helping to make hotter, by going there. Irony at its best.

The internet helped shrink the world further and faster, with websites operated by enthusiastic alternative sailors linking and learning to and from each other via powerful search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, until there were enough keen crews to want to pitch their vessels against others – all that was needed was an organiser. Finally, an advertiser on one of the most popular marine websites, decided to risk sponsoring a great race, where the boats must be electrically powered by energy captured directly from nature. Potential contestants flooded to the call.

The sponsor was an energy drink company, determined to challenge the two biggest drinks companies, Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola. Such a challenge was probably a bigger undertaking than the race itself.

To begin with the car and boat designs were wild and uninhibited, but eventually the laws of physics tamed such flair, influenced inevitably by spiraling costs. The fastest solar powered cars ended up looking like stretched turtle shells on thin wheels.

Solar powered river boats sprang up all over the world beginning in Switzerland and spreading across Europe to the Mediterranean, London’s River Thames, Scotland’s Loch Ness, then to exotic holiday locations, the Caribbean, Australia and Canada. Most of these slow moving craft were little more than ordinary boats with parasols covered in solar panels. Crude, but suitable for rivers and lakes.

Steve recalls a lecture given by John Storm:- 

   "Climate change could have been nudged into top gear if motor manufacturers had been politically incentivised earlier in the day."

   "One memorable vehicle represented a missed opportunity for mankind in 1996 – with instant electric refueling for a 150 mpg hybrid, pooh, poohed by British think tanks in favour of hydrogen, but then later in 2018, the same British think tanks begging for the same solution, as battery electric cars took to the streets in greater numbers."

  “We take for granted our cars and trucks, but can you imagine a world without high speed convenience transport. The pioneering spirit of thousands of exceptionally gifted engineers developed the motor car to its present state, but the five pioneering inventors of modern transport, nearly all lived in Germany. We are standing on the shoulders of determined, hands-on intellectual giants, beginning with Nikolaus August Otto a German engineer who built the first practical gas engine which he displayed at the 1867 Paris Exhibition. He later built a four-stroke, spark ignition internal combustion engine which is where the ‘Otto Cycle’ comes from. Like many great inventions ahead of their time, it was to be another sixteen years before the next major step.”

John reached for a glass on the podium and poured water from a jug, taking a few sips, then he continued, 

   “In 1883 Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach built an IC powered motorcycle, then in 1890 founded Daimler Motor Co which built Mercedes cars. Karl Benz was the first engineer to sell four wheel four stroke powered vehicles to a standardised pattern in 1885. Then in 1897 German engineer Rudolf Diesel built the first compression ignition four stroke engine. Henry Ford came along in 1908 with his famous Model T followed by the all important mass-production line 1913 which revolutionised car production for the masses and was just as important as the invention of the motor car.”

Pictures of these great men and their machines appeared behind John on a large silver screen, as he clicked to advance slides from a Macrosense™ presentation, which in turn were projected from his powerful Octlon™ powered laptop computer. Finally, AMD had overtaken the rival firms Octium™ processor for sheer number crunching ability. 

   "And then we come to the solar cell. NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, developed the silicon based solar cell to power satellites in the 1950s and 1960s. Satellites needed constant onboard power for inertial stability, to maintain geostationary orbit and radio transmissions." 

   "At the same time the silicon transistor miniaturisation was born for use in modern computers, which first navigated Apollo Moon missions there and back. The Human race had come a long way since the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta invented his famous battery Pile to generate a small electric current and British mathematician Charles Babbage had begun construction of his vault size calculating machine. He died in 1871, after the government refused financial support to complete the work. ........."

KULO LUNA - Is the story of a giant humpback whale and her young friend Kana who is killed by pirate whalers in the south pacific ocean. Enraged by the death of Kana, Kulo attacks the pirate ship, finally sinking it, but getting herself wounded in the process.

On hearing of the sinking of one of their suppliers, a Japanese cartel put a $multi-million dollar bounty on her head, when another whaling ship gives chase. Before not too long the media hear of the hunt and betting begins all around the world. At this point our hero, John Storm, abandons a solar boat race to try and help the whale where his boat, the Elizabeth Swan, is not far away from the last sighting.

John rescues Kulo from being eaten by sharks, but that is just the beginning of their adventure, as the pirates whalers close in for the kill........

The map above shows you where Kulo's epic fight for life begins and concludes. Copyright © Jameson Hunter 2006 and 2018. The right of Jameson Hunter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. In this work of fiction, the characters, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or they are used entirely fictitiously. Blueplanet Universal Productions & Electrick Publications, London, England. ISBN: 0-953-7824-01