Cook

Our next stop on the train was the deserted town of Cook. It’s a small outback town located on the longest straight stretch of track in the world spanning a distance of approximately 300 miles. The desert stretches as fast as the eye can see in any direction giving the town and the surrounding area an eerie sense of isolation.

Cook sits 600 miles from Adelaide and 950 miles from Perth. When the east-west Trans Australian Railway was completed in 1917 Cook was a major base for maintenance groups and provided accommodations for the railway crews. After the privatization of the railway, population in Cook declined, leaving the town almost abandoned.

Today the relationship between the town of Cook and the Indian Pacific is important because the train brings food and supplies to the temporary residents who provide the train with fuel and water that is delivered to the town on a weekly basis.

In the town’s glory days it had a town’s manager’s house, a school, a swimming pool (we have no idea where the water came from), a general store, post office, repeater station, train station, memorial hospital, and jail cells. When it is time to reboard the train there is a long blast from the town’s fire siren.