Luurnpa is the ancestral kingfisher who led the Kukaja people to their country in the Dreaming. He travelled from the north stopping at all the sources of living water in the desert. He came to Tjalputjalpu, north of Lake MacKay, and camped beside the warran, clay pans that join up to form a vast flood plain after heavy summer rains. In contemporary Warlpiri paintings, traditional iconography is used to represent the ‘Jukurrpa’ (Dreaming). Artists depicted Luurnpa Jukurrpa using rectangular and circular shapes to indicate warran (claypans); vertical and horizontal lines to represent karru (creeks), and parallel transverse lines to depict Luurnpa’s spears. At some of the sacred places he visited, Luurnpa left special powers and ‘big law’.
