Baháʼí Faith in Australia
[17] The next known news story covering events in Baháʼí history was in The Argus, 4 November 1850 in Melbourne which briefly mentions it.
Recent scholarship has identified a fringe element distinct from all the major aspects of the religion, its community and leadership at the time, as actually being responsible.
The seventh and eighth of the tablets was the first to mention taking the Baháʼí Faith to Australia and was written on 11 and 19 April 1916, but was delayed in being presented in the United States until 1919 – after the end of World War I and the Spanish flu.
These tablets were translated and presented by Mirza Ahmad Sohrab on 4 April 1919, and published in Star of the West magazine on 12 December 1919.
[22] (Tablet 7) "The moment this divine Message is carried forward by the American believers from the shores of America and is propagated through the continents of Europe, of Asia, of Africa and of Australasia, and as far as the islands of the Pacific, this community will find itself securely established upon the throne of an everlasting dominion..., if some teachers go to other islands and other parts, such as the continent of Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, also to Japan, Asiatic Russia, Korea, French Indochina, Siam, Straits Settlements, India, Ceylon and Afghanistan, most great results will be forthcoming.
"[23]In 1920 Englishman John Hyde Dunn, and his Irish wife, Clara, sailed to Australia[2] from the United States where they each had emigrated, converted to the religion, met and married.
[26] News of John Esslemont's 1915 declaration of faith, and his forthcoming book Baháʼu'lláh and the New Era, had also spread to some of his associates, William and Annie Miller in Australia who then became Baháʼís in the 1920s.
[28] In 1925 Effie Baker left other Australian converts as well as a contingent from New Zealand for trip on pilgrimage where they stayed some 19 days and then visited with the community of the Baháʼí Faith in the United Kingdom.
)[31] The Dunns and Martha Root also visited Hobart in Tasmania during which Gretta Lamprill converted and continued to sustain the religion on the island - eventually she was elected to the National Spiritual Assembly and later was named a Knight of Baháʼu'lláh together with Glad Parke, who travelled with her to the Society Islands (now French Polynesia) in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
Whittaker, Hyde Dunn, Olive Routh; and from New Zealand Mrs. E. Axford, Ethel Blundell, and Margaret Stevenson.
[2] Elizabeth Hindson was the first Indigenous Australian elected to serve as a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Australia.
After decades of service in the Australian community, Collis Featherstone was distinguished by being appointed as a Hand of the Cause of God in 1957 (d.1990) and he and four other Hands were present at the first international conference hosted by the Australian Baháʼí community in March 1958 when almost 200 Baháʼís from 17 Baháʼí communities gathered: Iran, Pakistan, (S) Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, Tonga, New Guinea, Papua, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Solomon Islands, Samoa, Cook Islands, Fiji, New Zealand, Formosa, and the United States.
[4] In an atmosphere of growing tension over war, in October 1940 Gretta Lamprill in Tasmania was visited by government officers seeking information about the group's activities[32] and from then on the Baháʼís consciously sought out collaboration with like-minded social movements and involved academics and outstanding public figures of the day in their public meetings.
[51] By 1949 the Hobart community was able to elect its local spiritual assembly with founding members of Frank & Myra Brown, Mabel Bailey, Kit Crowder, Eileen Costello, Katherine Harcus, Gretta Lamprill, Katie Pharaoh, and Ben Raynor.
[32] In 1958 the Hobart community hosted a Tasmanian Baháʼí conference with representatives from Launceston, Clarence, and Glenorchy in June 1957.
[6] The size and diversity of the community was boosted in the 1980s when Australia opened its doors to those fleeing the resurgence of persecution of Baháʼís in Iran, characterized as a diaspora.
[54] In 1981 the Minister for Immigration announced a Special Humanitarian Assistance Program for Iranians to seek refuge in Australia.
Other buildings located on the site include a visitor's centre, bookshop, picnic area, hostel, caretaker's cottage, and the administrative offices of the Australian Baháʼí community.
Hand of the Cause Ugo Giachery conveyed this photograph to the Conference for Australasia at Australia at the House of Worship.
[62] The religion entered a new phase of activity when a message of the Universal House of Justice dated 20 October 1983 was released.
Their statement mentions that most women's groups did not believe the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality caught the imagination of many of the organisations involved in the WomenSpeak Network.
[66] Price went on eventually to be director of the 420-voice choir and 90-piece symphony orchestra for the second Baháʼí World Congress in New York in 1992 and many other notable events.
[27] In the mid and late 1990s Cathy Freeman added some awareness of the religion in Australia as an Aboriginal Olympic medalist who grew up as a Baháʼí.
[67] In 2001 the 2nd edition of A Practical Reference to Religious Diversity for Operational Police and Emergency Services added the Baháʼí Faith in its coverage of religions in Australia.
[11] A TV medical-drama called MDA - Medical Defense Australia, which went on the air on 23 July 2002 through 2005 with an ongoing Baháʼí character, Layla Young, played by a non-Baháʼí[68] actress Petra Yared.
[69][70] And Luke McPharlin has been visible as a distinguished Australian footballer who mentioned his spiritual beliefs in his reasons for his sportsmanship.
[75] In 1998 Baháʼís in the state of Victoria celebrated their 75th anniversary and counted approximately 1600 adults, youth, and children, organised in more than 50 communities, with 29 local assemblies in the Melbourne metropolitan area with public events where hundreds of people come.
