Of course the globe is still the same size, but it is the ways we get around it that has made all corners so much more accessible.

No where is this more apparent than at a local level.

Warrnambool has always been an important regional city, but it was once much more remote than it is today.

During the 1960s, 70s and 80s, a trip down the highway to Melbourne was a monumental adventure.

While there were alternative routes, two were used by the vast majority.

The first of these was in your car, straight down the Princes Highway.

It was on average a three-hour journey, all single lane until the freeway past Geelong.

There were some iconic, must stop-offs along the way.

The first was just on the Warrnambool side of Colac, the Koala Motel.

It had an incredible location, nestled among the Stony Rises, with the Floating Islands across the road.

This photo shows it in its heyday, sign still intact, cigarette advertising on the window, truck resting in the yard and a Holden Commodore wagon out the front.

It may not have been a peak holiday time of the year, with the motel sign indicating vacancies.

While it was called a motel, for those Warrnambool folk on their way to the big smoke, it was a place to stop to grab an ice-cream or a burger.

It would not have been a place recommended by dietitians, but it was a feed that certainly hit the spot.

It also had a menagerie of small animals out the side and back for customers to pat.

While the Koala Motel was the place to stop on the way to the state's capital, it was in Geelong that the evening stop occurred.

These were the days before the by-pass around Geelong, and the first thing you ran into was the suburb of Belmont.

Now Belmont was your average suburb, except for one amazing difference, it had McDonalds.

This was huge, given the first golden arches restaurant didn't make it to Warrnambool until 1989.

And so it was that every car and bus coming back from Melbourne would make a bee-line for the Maccas in Belmont.

What a thrill it was, so much so that legend has it that carloads of young people from Warrnambool would travel to Geelong and back again, purely to go to McDonalds.

While the road to Melbourne was all about food, the other popular route was getting to the city on the train.

Nearly every Warrnambool child of the time would have had a school excursion by train to the Melbourne Zoo or Melbourne Show.

Both these destinations provided their own highlights, but it was invariably the train trip up and back that was the most memorable part of the day.

At the time, the trains were the old red rattlers, run by VicRail.

The train's carriages were mostly made up of cabins, with eight people fitting into each.

Now these cabins were either heaven or hell.

If you were lucky enough to get into a cabin with just your own family or friends, there was no better trip to be had. You could be loud and lively, it was a home on rails.

But for those of us who were socially awkward, getting stuck in a cabin full of strangers could be a dreadful experience.

The train had a bit of the wild west about it, you could have a beer and smoke until your heart's content.

The toilet system was straight from the middle-ages, the bowl had no bottom, what you did went onto the track below.

This of course meant going to the toilet when the train stopped at a station was frowned upon.

A part of the journey that was also highly anticipated was the tunnel just the Warrnambool side of the Geelong station.

The tunnel threw the whole train into darkness and seemed to go forever, to the delight of some and the screams of others.

Melbourne is rightfully rated as a world-class city, and is now just down the road for country people.

But for all that convenience, mystical memories of when it was a land far far away continue to romantically sit with those who lived through that time.