Panpanpalala

Panpanpalala is the crested bellbird of the Uluru Tjukurpa, appearing in the Lungkata narrative as the pair of hunter men who had speared an emu. When they came to Lungkata's camp asking after the wounded bird and he denied having seen it, they walked on, but the emu's tracks betrayed his theft. In their anger the bellbird hunters lit the great bushfire at the base of Uluru whose smoke overcame Lungkata and brought about his death. As an ancestral agent of justice against greed and lying, Panpanpalala embodies the crested bellbird whose ringing call is a familiar sound of the desert, and the being is generally invoked as a pair of brothers in keeping with the twinned hunters of the story.

Domains

• bellbird totem
• hunting and justice

Powers

• avenge theft with bushfire

Epithets

• Panpanpalala kutjara — The Two Bellbird MenParks Australia, Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, 'The Lungkata story' (primary)

Relations

• enemy: LungkataThe bellbird hunters pursued Lungkata for stealing their wounded emu and punished his lie with fire.Parks Australia, Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, 'The Lungkata story' (primary)

Sources

• Panpanpalala are the crested-bellbird hunter men whose wounded emu Lungkata stole; they exposed his lie and killed him with a bushfire.: Parks Australia, Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, 'The Lungkata story' (Anangu Tjukurpa) (primary); Mountford, C. P. (1965), Ayers Rock: Its People, Their Beliefs and Their Art, Angus & Robertson, Sydney (secondary)