The thieves looted multiple cars in the area, including along the Kiewa Valley Highway, Hill Street, Lakeside Avenue, Simmonds Street, Simmonds Creek Road, Mountain Avenue, Freeburgh Avenue, Tawonga Crescent and McKay Street, selectively stealing a range of large and expensive items.

First year carpentry apprentice and McKay Street resident Harry Elliott said he'd had more than $40,000 worth of belongings stolen, including a van, all his tools, four mountain bikes and a chainsaw, from his property alone.

"Essentially my livelihood is taken and all my fun hobby stuff taken too," he said.

"I'm pretty bloody gutted.

"I don't make enough money a week to buy all these tools again over the next year."

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Mr Elliott said in Mount Beauty residents didn't worry about theft.

"Which I guess makes it hurt way more, because everyone is going to change their lifestyle after today," he said.

Last month there were a number of burglaries in the Bright region.

Mr Elliott said the stealing spree must have been planned.

"Either a big vehicle or multiple people and multiple vehicles, because it's just a ridiculous amount of stuff and the amount of places they've been, it has to have taken hours," he said.

"It's affected a lot of people in the community as well ...I hope everyone recovers from it and isn't too scared."

Lakeside Avenue residents El O'Callaghan and her partner Sam Purdie woke to find their housemates' cars stripped of all valuables, including snowboards, boots, a passport and wallet, totaling at least $5000.

Ms O'Callaghan said both cars had been locked.

"Close to a dozen people have all had their cars at least gone through, and more, by the sounds of it," she said.

Mr Purdie thought the thieves would have scouted the area.

"It seems like the major part of the theft has been this one big location where they've got these streets all lined up with things to take and then they've hit every street," he said.

Ms O'Callaghan said it was shocking after so many hardships for the community.

"In a town where of course we've had our mountain tax come into everything that we pay for at the supermarket, the petrol and just to have this kind of thing happen just as school holidays started and everyone's working so ridiculously hard, it's such a shock to the system," she said.

"And this is after all of the bushfires that everyone went through and it's just going to change the town for the worst, I think, in terms of what kind of scars this will leave."

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