Nepele

Nepele is an ancestral sky-being of the Lower Murray closely bound into the Ngurunderi and Waiyungari cycles. He is the brother of the two women Ngurunderi took as wives, and in the Ngurunderi Dreaming it is Nepele who helps spear the great cod Pondi once it has swum into Lake Alexandrina. In the Waiyungari narrative recorded by Meyer he is the elder brother whose two wives, taking the form of emus, lure and seduce the red-ochred initiate Waiyungari; his discovery of the betrayal and burning of the hut drives that story's flight into the sky. Sources differ on whether it was Nepele or Ngurunderi who transformed the offending wives into the Pages Islets.

Domains

• sky cosmos
• ancestral law

Powers

• turns lawbreakers to stone

Relations

• ally: NgurunderiHelped Ngurunderi spear Pondi after it entered Lake Alexandrina.Berndt, Berndt & Stanton (1993). A World That Was. (secondary)
• sibling: WaiyungariElder brother of Waiyungari, whose two wives seduced Waiyungari.Meyer, H.A.E. (1846). Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of the Encounter Bay Tribe. Adelaide. (primary)

Sources

• Nepele is an ancestral sky-being and senior law-man of the Lower Murray, brother of the two women Ngurunderi married and elder brother of Waiyungari; he assists in spearing Pondi and, in some tellings, petrifies the wrongdoing wives.: Meyer, H.A.E. (1846). Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of the Encounter Bay Tribe. Adelaide. (primary); Berndt, Berndt & Stanton (1993). A World That Was. Melbourne University Press. (secondary)