# Baker, Euphemia Eleanor

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-19 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Graham Hassall, Baker, Euphemia Eleanor, Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 1996, bahai-library.com.
> ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
> 
> Baker, Euphemia Eleanor
> 
> Graham Hassall
> published in Australian Dictionary of Biography Volume 14: 1940-1980ed. John Ritchie
> 
> Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 1996
> 
> Effie Baker typified the
> Australian female who sacrificed the path of marriage and family
> to pursue her love of art and life. She was born 25 March 1880 in
> Goldsborough near Ballarat, to parents whose immigrant British
> families had been drawn by the excitement and promise of
> prospecting on the Victorian gold-fields. Her grandfather, Henry
> Evans Baker, who had left his native Kent for North America as a
> young man and met and married a Scottish girl, Euphemia McLeash,
> in New York, captained a sea-collier into Melbourne in 1852 and
> had been unable to muster a crew with which to depart. Sensing
> adventure, Baker sold his boat and joined the rush. Euphemia
> Mcleash's brother William subsequently joined Baker, and with
> partners Robert Dodd and Samual Crozier the four discovered the
> Bealiba Reef, also known as the Queen's Birthday Reef, and
> registered their claim on the last day of 1863.
> 
> Effie's maternal forbears
> were also British. Her mother's father, James Cully Smith,
> arrived in Australia aged eighteen, and married Eliza Ball in
> Adelaide in 1845. Having for a time worked a bullock team in
> South Australia James brought his family to Goldsborough, where
> the Ball's daughter Margaret married John Baker, son of Henry and
> Euphemia, in December 1879.
> 
> Effie, the first of their
> eleven children, was born the following year. As the family
> expanded she was sent to live with her grandparents in Ballarat.
> It was here during the formative years 1886-1890 that grandfather
> Baker imparted to Effie a life-long fascination with scientific
> instruments, an aptitude for creativity, and a sense of inquiry.
> She attended Mount Pleasant State School, Grenville College,
> Ballarat East Art School, Carew-Smyth's Art School, and finally
> Beulie College. After receiving a thorough grounding in colour
> and composition, Effie became increasingly interested in the new
> science of photography. With a quarter-plate camera given to her
> by an aunt, she took photos while on holidays in Perth in 1898
> and around the Ballarat district in 1899, which she developed,
> printed, and presented in photo albums as gifts to her parents.
> 
> In 1900 Effie moved to
> Black Rock in Melbourne, to live with Henry Baker's sister
> Euphemia, a school headmistress, and one of the first women to
> obtain entrance to the civil service university course in
> Victoria. Undoubtedly, aunt "Feem"s independence and
> success in her career left a lasting impression on Effie. In 1914
> Melbourne printers T.H. Hunter published a booklet of seven of
> her photographs as Wild Flowers of Australia which proved
> immediately successful and went into second (1917), third (1921),
> and fourth (1922) printings. The booklet, among the first of its
> kind in Australia, was bound with green ribbon, and the mounted
> photographic plates (5&3/4 inches x 4 inches) were
> interleaved with tissue paper. A Melbourne newspaper said the
> colours were "faithfully reproduced with exquisite softness
> through the medium of hand-coloured photographs" and
> recommended the booklet as an ideal Christmas gift. In addition
> to this colour photography, Effie sold intricately worked wooden
> "Australian toys", made doll's houses for charities,
> and depicted Australian wild-flowers in water-colours. While
> living at Beaumaris in 1922 Effie and her good friend Ruby Beaver
> began attending meetings of a "New Civilisation Centre"
> based on New Thought, a philosophical and mental therapeutics
> movement that had evolved in North America that was being
> promoted in Australia by a Californian medical doctor, Dr Julia
> Seton Seers. Although inspired by Christianity, New Thought was a
> philosophic rather than a religious movement, the appeal of which
> lay in its emphasis on the power of constructive thinking, on the
> imminence of a "new age", and in its free discussion of
> religious ideas. Effie and Ruby first heard of the Bahá'í Faith
> at Dr Seer's Centre, and Effie was the second in Australia, after
> Sydney optometrist Ostwald Whitaker, to become a Bahá'í.
> 
> Both had met Hyde and
> Clara Dunn, an English-Irish couple who had become Bahá'ís in
> California and had arrived in Australia in 1920 to promote their
> religion, which had its origins in Nineteenth Century Persia.
> Effie found Hyde's address to the Melbourne New Thought Centre
> captivating. He spoke of the need at this time for world unity
> based on racial equality and inter-religious understanding, and
> for individuals to investigate religious truth for themselves
> rather than be led by tradition; and referred to such fundamental
> teachings of Bahá'u'lláh, founder of the Bahá'í religion, as
> the equality of the sexes, and the essential complementarity of
> the great religions. Effie was convinced by the "humble
> sincerity and faith" with which Hyde spoke, and her
> acceptance of the Bahá'í Faith rapidly changed the direction of
> her life's work.
> 
> In 1923 she travelled with
> the Dunns to Tasmania and to Western Australia, and in 1924
> visited New Zealand with internationally renowned Bahá'í
> teacher and Esperantist Martha Root. Effie learnt while in
> Auckland that four New Zealand Bahá'ís were making a pilgrimage
> to the Bahá'í holy shrines in Haifa, Palestine, and accepted
> their invitation to join them. She was suffering lead poisoning
> as a result of many years of wetting her paint-brush with her
> tongue rather than in water, and this proposed three-month
> journey was an opportunity to take a curative sea-voyage, as she
> had been advised. The pilgrims departed Adelaide in January 1925
> and it was eleven years before Effie returned.
> 
> When she re-visited Haifa,
> following pilgrimage and then several weeks holiday in England,
> Effie accepted the invitation of Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the
> Bahá'í Faith, to remain there to act as hostess of a newly
> completed pilgrim hostel for Western Bahá'ís. She had made firm
> friends with the women in Shoghi Effendi's family and had no
> major commitments waiting in Australia, and residence in Haifa
> brought the opportunity for practical service to her Faith (for
> she did not regard herself as a public speaker like Hyde Dunn, or
> Martha Root), as well as the opportunity to meet fascinating
> people from the East and the West.
> 
> Within a short period
> Shoghi Effendi came to appreciate Effie's talents as photographer
> and model-maker. Her good fortune was to commence residing in
> Haifa when he was preparing the first Bahá'í Yearbook, a
> publication chronicling Bahá'í activities world-wide which
> continues to the present time as the Bahá'í World. Early
> volumes include numerous of her photographs of the Bahá'í
> monument gardens on Mt. Carmel, widely regarded as the most
> beautiful in all Israel. Also, Effie made models of landscapes to
> assist Shoghi Effendi in his planning of new sections of the
> gardens.
> 
> Her hardest assignment
> came late in 1930, when Shoghi Effendi was urgently seeking a
> photographic record of numerous locations associated with the
> origins of the Babí and Bahá'í religions. Haste was required
> to photograph many towns and buildings which were being razed in
> the Persian government's rapid modernisation program.
> Furthermore, Shoghi Effendi was nearing completion of his
> translation of Nabil's Narrative, an epic account of the
> religions' origins, and required the photos to accompany the
> first edition.
> 
> At a time when European
> women could find little protection in the region, Effie travelled
> by train and car through Iraq to Persia, where living conditions
> swung from the brief luxury of Tehran Hotels to bitterly cold
> night-riding on heavily laden mules across steep and stony
> terrain. A three month commission extended to eight as she moved
> between locations, keeping well hidden her No1 A Kodak, and her
> half plate clamp camera with triple extension, and often herself
> completely covered in a black "cuddor".
> 
> The complete lack of
> photographic supplies in the country, and her need to check her
> work before leaving each location, tested Effie's photographic
> abilities to the full. In the absence of dark-room or running
> water, she developed film at night, ensuring that she had at
> least one good print from the snaps of various apertures taken at
> each site before moving on. She returned to Haifa with above one
> thousand good prints, some 400 of which have been published.
> 
> Effie returned to
> Goldsborough in February 1936, where she remained until moving to
> Sydney in 1963. She constantly shared with friends prints of her
> photos and art-works, although she shied from publicity and from
> any celebration of her unique life experience and achievements.
> In the remaining years of her life she enjoyed the love of the
> growing Australian Bahá'í community, and especially of children
> who received from her undeserved gifts and tales of adventure.
> She died in January 1968, her photographic accomplishments
> little-known beyond her circle of acquaintances. In 1981-82 her
> work was included in a national exhibition, Australian Women
> Photographers 1890-1950, and it has since begun to attract
> wider attention.
> 
> References:
> 
> Annear, Judy, & Merryn
> Gates, Australian Woman Photographers 1890-1950, George
> Paton Gallery, Melbourne University Union, 1981.
> 
> Hassall, Graham,
> "Effie Baker: A Remarkable Woman", Herald of the
> South 7, April 1986.
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views14025 views since posted 2000-01; last edit 2025-10-02 17:14 UTC;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../hassall_euphemia_eleanor_baker;
> URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
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> Citation: ris/155
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> — *Baker, Euphemia Eleanor (Used by permission of the curator)*