Then the PA announcement advised that we were on the 478-kilometre length between the 797 km post west of Ooldea and the 1275 km post west of Loongana.
It's the world's longest stretch of straight railway line.
As I looked out the window, on a full-circle vista, there was nothing to break the absolute flatness of the Nullarbor skyline.
That lack of variation gave plenty of time for catch-up scribbling. There was absolutely nothing new that could be added in the way of further detail apart from a mercifully short half-hour stop at Cook.
And you wouldn't want to be spending more than thirty minutes at Cook, the township that dates back to the construction of the line during the First World War.
Named after the sixth Prime Minister of Australia, Joseph Cook rather than navigator James, these days Cook is effectively a ghost town since the railways were privatised in 1997.
The new owners didn't want to maintain a community that increased overheads without contributing to revenue.