His two-hour commute from Torquay to Melbourne's CBD is significantly better than when he worked as an IT manager in Preston.

"On a good day then, it would take me two hours each way," the father of two says. "Some days to beat the traffic I would get up at 4.30am." Worst commute? "One day the drive took me five-and-a-half hours one way."

Mr McNamara's commute now, four hours a day has become the norm for a growing number of city workers.

The last Census showed regional Victorians commuting to Melbourne grew by 19,000 in the years to 2011.

Now, RMIT's Centre for Urban Research is looking at the long-term consequences of the rise of the super-commuter, and whether the increase is turning regional cities into "dormitory towns". It wants to hear from people who commute to Melbourne for work.

Todd Denham, the PhD researcher conducting RMIT's study, says preliminary results show just under 60 per cent of people moving to regional Victoria are commuting back to Melbourne for their job.

"Most appear to be trying to find work locally, rather than moving back," Mr Denham says.

He says around 20 per cent "will do it every day for decades" with no problem, like Mr McNamara, who moved to Torquay in 1997 (he now works three days in Melbourne, and two in Geelong).

Those who tire of the commute and decide they want to stay in regional Victorian towns like Bendigo, Ballarat, Castlemaine, Geelong, Drouin and Warragul, have to find something to do, and often it doesn't pay as well.

Ray Magid appears to be having a bet each way. He rises at 5am each morning to open his coffee cart at Kyneton railway station by 6am, then leaves for the city on the train once rush hour finishes.

"My day job is in accounting management and education, and the coffee cart is a sideline," says Mr Magid, who moved to Kyneton six years ago, having lived all his life in Melbourne.

He started the coffee cart 18 months ago, and sells produce in markets around the Macedon Ranges from a farm his family is building up. Mr Magid thinks a combination of land prices and lifestyle is driving the increase of regional residents commuting to Melbourne.

Before his move, Mr McNamara lived in Burnley and drove for 40 minutes to get to work. From Kyneton, he travels for 70 minutes by rail.

"You work on the train and do a lot of things that you can't do when you're sort of trying to drive through Melbourne's traffic," he says.

Meaghan Sullivan commutes, from Ballarat by car. The speech pathologist moved back five years ago to where she and her partner grew up, and works in Ballarat and Fitzroy, with equipment and specialists not available elsewhere.

Her drive to Fitzroy takes 90 minutes to two hours. "It takes me seven minutes to get to work in Ballarat," she says. On the days she travels to Melbourne, she doesn't get to see her family. "Commuting is enjoyable but it's really fatiguing. But I don't do the commuting because I need the work - it's because I like the work."

The importance of regional commuting to Melbourne is hardly new - the Kennett government's 1995 Living Suburbs strategy discussed towns taking the pressure off Melbourne's growth.

Improvements to freeways like the Calder and the Geelong Ring Road, and to rail services, have also made the commute more viable. More flexible working conditions and the option to work from home has also made it more appealing.

But the growth in travel is leading to problems, especially in areas where transport needs haven't been as well catered for as places like Bendigo or Geelong.

Andrew Butt is a planning academic with La Trobe's Bendigo campus (he commutes there via a 20-minute train trip from Castlemaine). He specialises in population change, and travel for work.

He found that the biggest jump in commuting long distances for work in Victoria was recorded in the five years to 2006 (the following five years were less dramatic but still steady).

"Improvements to rail and road were part of that, but also [decreasing] housing affordability," Dr Butt says, adding that the centralisation of rural services meant there was now many people travelling "quite vast distances" to regional centres too.

While a lot of people were moving to towns like Kyneton, Castlemaine or Woodend for lifestyle as much as affordability, they had access to excellent transport options.

"The problematic growth is in the Gippsland corridor," he says. "There is much worse public and road transport down there. Commuting from other areas is a joy compared from those areas."