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The mouth of the river was the site of the first recorded landfall in Australia by a European explorer, by Willem Janszoon in 1606.[1] 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.[2]
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,[3] 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.[4]
