This oil painting is one of the ten by Westall of Matthew Flinders' Australian voyage (1801-03) that the Admiralty commissioned from 1809 (ZBA7914, 7935-7936, 7938-7944): they were completed over the next three years. Westall also did a highly finished watercolour version (see PAG9778) which was probably mainly the one used for engraving his corresponding plate (of which there were nine) in Flinders' voyage account.

The engraving, titled 'Entrance of Port Lincoln from behind Memory Cove' is the second in vol. 1 of Flinders' 'Voyage to Terra Australis' (1814, and also separately published that year in Westall's 'Views of Australian Scenery'). It follows the account of the loss of eight men including Thistle, 'Investigator's' master, after the ship's cutter was capsized south of Port Lincoln off what Flinders subsequently named Cape Catastrophe: their bodies were not found and he left an inscribed copper-plate memorial to them at Memory Cove, which he named for them. This image looks north towards the bay he later named Port Lincoln, from his native county: an Aboriginal shelter is included in the foreground.

The related text of 24 February reads: ‘The soil of the land round Memory Cove, and of Cape Catastrophe in general, is barren; though the vallies and eastern sides of the hills are covered with brushwood, and in the least barren parts there are small trees of the genus eucalyptus. The basis stone is granite, mostly covered with calcareous rock, sometimes lying in loose pieces; but the highest tops of the hills are huge blocks of granite. Four kangaroos, not larger than those of Thistle's Island, were seen amongst the brushwood; and traces of natives were found so recent, that although none of the inhabitants were seen, they must have been there not longer than a day before. Water does consequently exist somewhere in the neighbourhood, but all our researches could not discover it.’ For other notes on the group see ZBA7914.