It was with bemused condescension that a 2018 financial news article reported on a unique challenge facing a mining company at a new site in Western Australia. According to local Martu lore, the massive dry salt bed was home to a tribe of human-eating monsters.
This didn’t dissuade Reward Minerals. For the firm operating in the dusty Outback region of Pilbara, Lake Disappointment presented a lucrative opportunity—“the next Saskatchewan” of potash mining, for what it’s worth. But for the Martu, the Aboriginal people who have lived in Pilbara for thousands of years, Kumpupirntily, as the lakebed is known, is an area to be avoided at all costs. In the sands beneath Kumpupirntily, legend goes, is where the Ngayurnangalku live.
This name, which roughly translates to “will eat me,” provides some indication of the Ngayurnangalku’s fearsome predilections. Living under the dry lake, in their own universe, the bald, fanged, fearsome Ngayurnangalku emerge only to snatch anyone foolish enough to pass overhead with their long, curving claws. The lakebed itself doesn’t have a much better reputation. “A stark, flat and unforgiving expanse of blinding salt-lake surrounded by sand hills,” writes Australia National University researcher John Carty of Kumpupirntily. “Martu never set foot on the surface of the salt-lake and, when required to pass it by, can’t get away fast enough.”