The Tingari are the great ancestral company at the heart of Pintupi cosmology: elders of initiated manhood who, in the Tjukurrpa, journeyed over vast tracts of the Western Desert accompanied by novices whom they instructed in ritual and law. Their travels opened up the country, forming rock holes, dunes, soakages and ceremonial grounds, and at certain sites, such as Marawa west of Wilkinkarra, they passed beneath the earth to continue underground. Much of the imagery of Pintupi ceremony and of the Papunya Tula painting movement derives from Tingari song-cycles, whose full narratives remain restricted men's knowledge. In one of the principal accounts of the creation of Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay), a party of Tingari men set the country ablaze while hunting a kangaroo, the fierce fire scorching the land into the vast salt lake.