A treasure trove of photographs taken by a tailor in the central Victorian city of Bendigo's post-war period has been returned to the city.

The Allan Doney Photographic Collection comprising more than 14,000 negatives and 3,000 prints from the 1950s to '70s, has been gifted from the National Trust of Australia to the Bendigo Historical Society.

Society president Euan McGillivray said the collection offered more than a "brilliant time capsule".

"Bendigo when Allan was photographing was life after gold,"

Mr McGillivray said.

"There's so much to learn about how people lived, what they thought of themselves and how local and state governments thought about the developing city."

The city was in a period of transition from 100 years of continuous gold mining, with the closure of the last m

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