Kondoli, the whale-man, is the fire-owner of Ramindjeri and Ngarrindjeri tradition, first recorded by Meyer in 1846. He alone held fire and refused to share it, so the people arranged a great dance at Muthabaringga to draw him out. While his attention was turned, he was speared in the neck; fire burst from the wound, and Kondoli fled into the sea, where he became the whale that spouts water from the wound in its back. In the same event the assembled people were transformed into the various fishes, birds and animals, so that the Kondoli story accounts both for the origin of fire among the people and for the origins of many species.