Cook is a former railway town in South Australia. It is by rail from Port Augusta, by rail from Kalgoorlie, and about north of the Eyre Highway via an unsealed road. It is on the longest stretch of straight railway in the world at .
History
Cook was established by the Commonwealth Railways as a railway town in 1917 on the Nullarbor Plain when the Trans-Australian Railway was opened. It was named after former Prime Minister of Australia Joseph Cook.
The town was a major centre for track maintenance and locomotive and rolling stock repairs with over 50 employees. It had a general store, golf course, hospital, primary school and swimming pool. Railway employees and their families depended on the weekly Tea & Sugar provisions train for the delivery of supplies until it ceased running in 1996. When the town was populated, water was pumped from an underground artesian aquifer but later, all water was brought in by train.
In 1942, a prisoner of war camp was established in Cook with Italian prisoners assigned to work on the railway line.
From a population of 200, as at 2025 Cook had a resident population of four.
The crossing loop can cross trains up to long. The former airstrip is known as a place to spot inland dotterel.
Climate
In popular culture
The short 1955 film Nullarbor Hideout was set in and around Cook; the first scenes give a good impression of the railway line and infrastructure, and a sense of the townspeople's isolation and their dependence on the railway.