Karora is the central figure of the best-known Northern Aranda (Arrernte) creation narrative, recorded in full by T. G. H. Strehlow from the ceremonial custodians of the bandicoot totemic centre of Ilbalintja, north of the MacDonnell Ranges. In the beginning Karora lay asleep in everlasting darkness at the bottom of what would become the Ilbalintja soak, the ground above him covered with flowers; from his head rose a living tnatantja pole reaching toward the sky. As he slept, bandicoots and then his first-born human son emerged from his navel and armpits, and the sun rose over Ilbalintja for the first time. Waking, Karora hunted and cooked the bandicoots with his sons, who multiplied over successive nights. He ultimately returned to lie in eternal sleep at the bottom of the soak, where Aranda men still greeted him with offerings of green boughs when drinking there. Mircea Eliade and other historians of religion have treated the Karora narrative as a paradigmatic Central Australian creation myth.