For an 11-year-old girl told she had to help shift her entire home to a muddy wasteland, the move to new Tallangatta was traumatic.

Robin Butler proudly lived in the town until just three years ago, but acceptance took time.

She was one of a crowd of people to gather on Saturday to celebrate 60 years since old Tallangatta shifted across eight kilometres to accommodate the Hume Weir.

The new town is on land which was “compulsory acquired” from Mrs Butler’s grandfather and great-uncle.

Her grandfather fought to the end, sending a telegram to the Victorian premier, begging the town not be flooded, but the decision was final.

The transition took place throughout the cold, wet winter of 1956.

“It was a mixture of interesting and traumatic,” Mrs Butler said.

“When we first moved here, it was all just mud, it was red clay and we were shuttled backwards and forwards to school.”

Marianne Conn had a very different experience as the daughter of Dutch migrants - the shift was exciting.

Her family lived in a small cottage on a farm in old Tallangatta, but in the new town they were placed in commission housing by the water.

“Out on the farm they were digging big things to build the road and we swam in the lagoons with the platypuses,” she said.

“(New Tallangatta) was a huge improvement to what we had.”

A growing town gave young people the opportunity to earn money by working hard to build gardens and community spaces.

The carrot to entice residents to move was homes by the waterfront they could use for recreation, but, after a few years, irrigators won the battle for more water and the level of the weir fell away.

Moments of town spirit managed to shine through.

Mrs Butler said that spirit was really flat during the first Christmas in new Tallangatta, with people too bust shifting to put up decorations.

So her grandfather used his old Chevy truck to tie up branches of pine trees to each post of the main street on Christmas Eve.

“By the end of Christmas Eve, all the shopkeepers had come out and decorated them – I was nearly 12 then and I thought, what a fabulous thing to do,” Mrs Butler said.

“There was a lot of pride in ‘we will do this’, at the time time town was moved.”