Baker, Euphemia Eleanor
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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.
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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.

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-- Baker, Euphemia Eleanor (Used by permission of the curator)