Seventy years on, the 'town that moved' isn't going anywhere

Seventy years ago, the tiny town of Tallangatta picked up its homes and moved.

The entire north-east Victorian town, or at least its timber buildings, was physically shifted eight kilometres west after an expansion to the Hume Dam made the already high flood risk too great to ignore.

Between 1954 and 1956, more than 100 timber houses were loaded onto trucks and hauled to higher ground, away from their previously flood-prone location.

Brick houses and civic buildings were rebuilt, and a number of prefabricated homes were brought in, heralding a new chapter for the once-flourishing goldfield town.

David Lamond was 14 when he found work moving "Old Tallangatta" buildings to the new site up the road.

"A couple of us kids would help the removalists. We'd get a pound a day — we thought we were rich," Mr Lamond said.

He remembers crawling beneath the lifted houses as they sat on trucks, scooping up coins that had shaken loose through the floorboards.

Then, he would hitch a ride as the homes rumbled down the road to their new foundations.

"It's something we'd never seen before — a house on the back of a truck,"

he said.

The town has remained in its new location for seven decades, with no further plans of moving.

"It's pretty good stuff," Mr Lamond said. "We've got a nice little town now."

What happened to the buildings left behind?

The structurally sound weatherboard homes were carted away on trucks. Those not ready for the trip were sold to farmers as sheds or outbuildings.

Brick buildings were pulled down, with the bricks repurposed for new versions in "new" Tallangatta, with the addition of some new bricks.

Not all could be moved or rebuilt, including the Old Tallangatta Presbyterian church.

Joseph Campbell, who worked at the Tallangatta Post Office, purchased the church for 80 pounds.

"I used the bricks for chimneys and built a new house on my farm," he said.

"It was a good investment, a lot of bricks in it and they were all used."

A flood risk

Tallangatta's position at the intersection of the Mitta Mitta River and Tallangatta Creek meant it often flooded after heavy rain.

"The main street had gutters probably six feet deep and six feet wide … it was a real hazard," Mr Lamond said.

"[If you took] a little kid to town, the first thing you had to watch was the kid didn't fall in."

Mary Grant was 10 when the town was moved.

She lives in an area locally referred to as "Toorak", up the hill from the old low-lying Tallangatta.

"The state rivers people didn't think it would survive when it was shifted," she said.

"They thought it would become a ghost town, but we've proved them wrong. We're still here 70 years later and we're not going anywhere in the near future."

This weekend, Tallangatta will commemorate the 70th anniversary of the town's move.