The City of Greater Bendigo in partnership with the Bendigo Historical Society has created an outdoor gallery experience in Hargreaves Street Mall showcasing post-war life from the Allan Doney Photographic Collection.
Curated by the Bendigo Historical Society, around 20 images from the Allan Doney Photographic Collection have been selected for the large-scale window display at the former Officeworks site in the Mall.
Allan Doney, a local tailor and passionate amateur photographer, began taking photographs at just 15 after receiving a Kodak Box Brownie camera. Over the following decades, he documented life across Bendigo and surrounding towns, capturing streetscapes, old mine sites, farms, and candid moments of everyday people.
His work is now widely recognised as an important visual record of a city in transition following the end of gold mining.
The collection was owned by the National Trust of Australia (Vic) and in a rare move it was gifted to the Bendigo Historical Society in 2025.
Bendigo Historical Society volunteers took on the enormous task of cataloguing, digitising around 13,000 film negatives and 3000 paper prints made between the early 1950s and the mid 1970s from Allan Doney's collection.
Some of the negatives were still in the paper bags and sleeves they were first stored in some 70 years ago.
Society President Euan McGillivray said the outdoor gallery in the Mall was an opportunity to share the collection more widely and celebrate it in the community.
"Allan's photos are a gift to the people of Greater Bendigo. With his camera, he roamed the streets and used beautiful light and composition to capture street life, with people coming and going, as well as significant buildings, some long gone," Euan said.
"This was a period of significant change for the region following the end of gold mining, and Allan was there to capture it in a way few others did at the time.
Creative City Coordinator Maree Tonkin said the painstaking work from the Bendigo Historical Society has saved an important historical time capsule of the region.
"The City is delighted to partner with the Bendigo Historical Society and share Allan Doney's fabulous collection as part of an outdoor gallery experience for shoppers and visitors in Hargreaves Street Mall," Maree said.
The Bendigo Historical Society's free exhibition Bendigo with Love featuring some of Allan Doney's collection until August 8 at 11 MacKenzie Street, Bendigo (check opening times).
