Evans was unaware at the time that the striking red cliffs along the coast had been remarked on much earlier when the Dutch ship Duyfken under Willem Janszoon charted the shores of Gulf of Carpentaria, making landfall at the Pennefather River in the Gulf of Carpentaria (the first authenticated European discovery of Australia), and again, in 1802, by Matthew Flinders.
Willem Janszoon made the first recorded European landing on the Australian continent in 1606, sailing from Bantam, Java in the Duyfken.
On board the ship was supercargo Willem Janszoon, former captain of the Duyfken, who wrote to the Dutch East India Company in Amsterdam about the discovery of an island during this yoyage.
When Jan Carstenszoon (or Carstensz) and Willem van Coolsteerdt landed the Pera and the Arnhem on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula of New Holland (now Australia) in 1623, after the first discovery by Willem Janszoon in the Duyfken in 1606, they then named the 'Gulf of Carpentaria' after the Governor-General, Pieter de Carpentier.