Charlton residents could finally exhale on Friday morning when dawn broke on a long, sleepless night and predictions of minimal damage from the steadily rising Avoca River proved accurate.

Stewart Smyth was among those who had feared the worst as the river threatened to burst its banks on Thursday.

“You packed everything up and took things away and it turned out ...” he trailed off.

“But best to do that than be sorry later on.

“I suppose everybody’s on edge from the last time, because we lost everything last time.”

The consensus around the town was that the devastation of the 2011 floods had made everyone jumpy whenever heavy rains descended, but there was hope after this recent close call the town could finally move on.

Christian Coughlin was up early to inspect the controversial Armstrong Street culvert, and summed up the mood.

“As soon as we got a big rain everyone started panicking a little bit, which is expected,” he said.

“I think this is really going to help the town come back to knowing that it will flood, but it’s not always going to be as bad as it was then.”

The culvert had been widened from about 20 centimetres to several metres across, in what proved to be a popular move by the local council – the news was met with cheers from the crowd at a town meeting on Wednesday night.

Like many others, Mr Coughlin blamed the smaller culvert for some of the impact of previous flooding.

“In January they dug a little trench that was just across the road and in 10 minutes that was full and it wasn’t doing anything to help the water,” he said.

“Whereas this time it’s been opened up completely and I think that’s what helped stop the town getting so much water in it.”

Authorities predict the water will peak at 7.5 metres during the evening, posing minimal risk to properties, but the town will again face the prospect of major flooding when rains return next week.

Incident controllers say it is too early to predict how heavy rains expected between Tuesday and Thursday will be, but if it turns out to be less than 20 millimetres or so the threat of inundation should remain low.

But if totals push the 50 millimetre mark, there will be more sleepless nights on the way for the otherwise sleepy towns along the Avoca River.

“As we get into the weekend the Bureau’s forecast for that rain event, Tuesday through to Thursday, will get more certain so they’ll be able to give us bit of a better handle on how much rain we’re expecting,” the incident control centre’s Ben Tate said.

In the meantime, there’s a grand final to win.