The Pennefather River in Queensland, Australia, is located on western Cape York Peninsula at 12°13′S 141°44′E. The river is about 11 km long and up to about 2 km wide.
The mouth of the river was the site of the first recorded landfall in Australia by a European explorer, by Willem Janszoon in 1606. Janszoon named it R. met het Bosch ("River with the Bush"), so that Australia's first recorded place name intriguingly was named after its iconic bush.
In 1802 Matthew Flinders mistook the river for the Coen River named by Jan Carstensz in 1623 (now the Archer River), so that the Bosch / Pennefather River was named Coen River on maps in the 19th century. In 1880, Captain Charles Edward de Fonblanque Pennefather established that there were now two Coen Rivers, and in 1894 Queensland authorities named the river after him, although the British Admiralty Chart for the Gulf of Carpentaria kept the name Coen River until 1967.
See also
- List of rivers of Australia
References
External links
- The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia by J E heeres, 1894
- Placenames Australia, Newsletter of the Australian National Placenames Survey, September 2005