Lumaluma (also Luma Luma) is the giant whale-ancestor and culture hero of the Gunwinggu, the people known today as Kunwinjku, of western Arnhem Land. Belonging to the sea, he could appear as a whale surging through the waves attended by the barramundi, but on land he took human form. Travelling along the coast with his wives he greedily declared the best foods the people gathered to be sacred and forbidden to them, keeping the food for himself, until the people, driven to anger, banded together and speared him. Mortally wounded, he turned his death into a gift: he taught the Gunwinggu the Mardayin (also Madayin) ceremony of initiation, its dances, its songs and the fine cross-hatched designs painted on the body and on sacred objects, the ranga objects being identified with his severed limbs. He is one of the central subjects of the bark painting of Yirawala, recorded by Sandra Le Brun Holmes, and of the Gunwinggu ethnography of the Berndts.