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The Bahá'í communities of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands, had their origins at the very dawn of the Formative Age. Their early champions were nurtured by heroes and heroines whose belief in the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh had been confirmed and consolidated through contact with 'Abdu'l-Bahá, during his travels to the West. Through the unaided efforts of Clara and Hyde Dunn, the Master's wish that his Father's teachings be spread to the islands of the South Seas was thus realised within his lifetime. Soon after, news of his passing spread a cold wind over the pioneers, which only the tender and hopeful words of Shoghi Effendi could clear. At the time of his appointment as Guardian and Head of the Bahá'í Faith, in the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, there were Bahá'ís in no more than thirty-five countries of the world. Thirty-six years later, when at the untimely close of his ministry, the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh had become known in nearly two-hundred more, modest geographical and numerical spread had enlarged the scope of the Bahá'í community in Australasia from two members in one country, to some thousands of followers in over 100 localities in Australia and New Zealand, and a further 210 amongst the islands of the Pacific. From the pen of Shoghi Effendi had flowed to them more than 700 letters and cables. Although the number of communications is small when compared to the volume of guidance directed to individual Bahá'ís and to Bahá'í institutions in other continents, the Australian and New Zealand communities share with them the rare privilege of having been in contact with Shoghi Effendi from the beginning to the end of his ministry. With his unerring guidance, local and national institutions of Bahá'u'lláh's rising World Order in the "antipodes" were nurtured through their infancy and period of complete obscurity. By 1963, three of the original fifty-six pillars of the Universal House of Justice had been raised in the South Pacific.
In 1970 the Australian National Spiritual Assembly published Letters from the Guardian to Australia and New Zealand 1923-1957; in 1982, to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the formation of the New Zealand National Spiritual Assembly, that body produced Arohanui: Letters from Shoghi Effendi to New Zealand. The significant expansion of Bahá'í communities in these two countries, as well as in the islands of the Pacific, in recent years, together with the lack of accessibility to the aforementioned books and other earlier publications, made it imperative that the Guardian's correspondence with individuals and institutions in the Australasian region be made more widely available. The suggestion was made in late 1988 to gather this correspondence in one publication. The task became one of considerable regional collaboration. About one third of the communications from the Guardian were in the Australian Bahá'í Archives at Mona Vale in Sydney. To these were added others received from the National Spiritual Assemblies of the Cook Islands, Fiji Islands, Mariana Islands, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, and the Western Caroline Islands. Not all of these Assemblies had additional information, but all deserve thanks for their investigations.
Numerous individuals also shared precious letters received from Shoghi Effendi. Among the pioneers to the Pacific, Lilian Ala'i, Margaret and Noel Bluett, Virginia Breaks, Vi Hoehnke, Elena Marsella, and Jean Sevin responded to requests for copies of previously unpublished letters. The late James Heggie also shared copies of his treasured correspondence. Throughout the project, the late Hand of the Cause of God Mr Collis Featherstone gave encouragement, and much guidance. Mrs Madge Featherstone also assisted greatly, finding several previously unknown letters in Mr Featherstone's papers. In 1998, after publication of the first edition, Mrs Featherstone forwarded to me additional letters from the Guardian, one dated January 28th 1924 to Clara and Hyde Dunn, one dated August 27th 1951 to Clara Dunn, and one dated May 31 1953 to Clara Dunn.
The work was greatly aided by the patient, invaluable, and meticulous work of the staff at the Department of Library and Archival Services at the Bahá'í World Centre, who supplied several hundred communications that had not been located in searching Australian and Pacific archives. Other correspondence was received from the United States National Bahá'í Archives. Following the task of keying the letters and cables onto computer, an advisory team to review the project, consisting of Miguel Gil, Lilian Ala'i, and Aflatoon Payman (aided in later stages by ManÏchir Gabriel and Rod Haake), painstakingly checked proofs against copies of the original communications. Layout, design, and final production were handled by Barry Anderson.
A word concerning the scope of this book is necessary. Dr Peter Khan has pointed out that this publication by no means constitutes a regional history of the Bahá'í Faith - although its contents facilitate the writing of such. Nor do its pages fully detail the most significant personalities and episodes in the Australasian Bahá'í communities - for whereas some individuals chose to write to Shoghi Effendi (as they were expressely encouraged by him to do), others refrained, not wishing to add to his heavy workload, news of what they regarded as their small concerns, or victories. Hence the mention or otherwise of people and places in this work, and whether on one occasion or many, does not measure the contribution of each. That task awaits another time.
Shoghi Effendi is known to have written some 26,000 letters to the Bahá'í world: those directed to the Antipodes, approximately 700, appear in the present volume. These include 81 that appeared in Letters of the Guardian to Australia and New Zealand, as well as 82 published in Arohanui: letters from Shoghi Effendi to New Zealand.
As the letters were penned for Shoghi Effendi by a series of secretaries, across almost four decades, they lack a uniformity in style and presentation. Different uses of "s" and "z", for example, have been retained, rather than standardised. Every effort has been taken to ensure that the contents of the letters have been reproduced in their entirety. Minor errors in grammar and style have been corrected with permission of the Department of Archives. The name and address of the addressee, where they were included in a letter, have been reproduced. In other cases, details have been supplied from accompanying envelopes, or other sources, and supplied in brackets thus [ ].
Shoghi Effendi had difficulty in securing suitable secretarial support. At some times family members assisted, while at others, Western Bahá'ís served as secretaries during extended periods spent in Haifa. They included `Azizu'lláh S. Bahádur (in 1924), Soheil Afnán (1924-30), Ruhi Afnán (1926-1933), H. Rabbáni (1931-40), Mehrenguiz Rabbáni (1932), J.E. Esslemont - who had lived in Australia briefly before becoming a Bahá'í - (1925), and Ethel J. Rosenberg (1927). Later, secretarial support was given the Guardian by RÏhíyyih Khánum, and in the 1950s, Amelia Collins (1951), Leroy Ioas (1952-57), and Jessie Revell (1953).
It is hoped that the publication of the Guardian's communications to the Bahá'ís of the Australasian region at this time will assist us in understanding the social and spiritual context in which we labour, and in grasping also the potential for the unfoldment of these communities, as Shoghi Effendi so clearly and expectantly described.
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