Bahá’í World/Volume 20/Bertha Dobbins
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BERTHA DOBBINS
Knight of Bahá’u’lláh 1895—1986
On 7 November 1986, on a perfect spring day, Knight of Baha’u’llah Beitha Dobbins was laid to rest at Centennial Park Cemetery in Adelaide, South Australia. It seemed that myriad daisies joined forces With the first flush of spring roses to bid that gallant soul a cheerful farewell, as she would have wanted it, as the funeral cortege moved from the chapel to the cemetery. Those gathered at the chapel included three generations of Bertha’s family and dear friends. I
Born in George Street, Port Chalmers (Dunedin) in New Zealand, two months premature, on 11 April 1895, the sixth of eleven children, Beitha never lost the will to survive against all odds. A teacher all her life, she inspired countless children with her
THE BAHA’I WORLD
enthusiasm for living and her absolutely unshakeable, positive faith that never knew the meaning of defeat.
For seven and a half years, Bertha taught in country schools in New Zealand. In August 1923, she resigned from the New Zealand Education Department With plans to go as a Church of England missionaiy to India to teach the Christian Faith to the peoples of that continent. Bertha wrote:
I was brought up in the Anglican Church which I loved very much and will always be grateful for early training there. It was my privilege to serve wherever help was needed. Indeed, having been trained in New Zealand as a school teacher, I offered to go as a missionary to India and took a correspondence course with that object in View. My papers were signed and sent to London. I was to go there and learn a language prior to going to India; but, always an insatiable reader, I came across a poem, ‘The Light of Asia’———the story of the Buddha! It was so beautiful! The thought dawned on me, ‘If His followers lived up to His Teachings and if all the Christians lived the Teachings of Christ, there would be no need of missionaries!’ Finally, I decided to travel and work my way round the world and write a book. So I left New Zealand in 1923.
Bertha went first to Australia, Where she joined South Australia’s Education Department. While she was teaching at Nailswmth Secondary School, the District Inspector, Adelaide Miethke, described Bertha, in a report dated 1 August 1927, as a “quiet, gentle little woman who has an influence which is distinctly good and spiritual in nature. She understands children and is full of devices for their interest. She has a free, easy discipline, yet the children respond to her quickly. Miss Mochan [her maiden name] is possessed of infinite patience. I have never heard her scold, nor her voice raised... I consider that both students and fellow-teachers receive an unconscious
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IN MEMORIAM
uplift by association with this quiet, modest, cheerful little woman.”
Within a few years of her arrival in Australia, Bertha had become involved in caring for the needy in the West End of Adelaide; had established free English classes for some early Italian immigrants; and had been appointed Divisional Commissioner of Gir1 Guides for Nailsworth at a ceremony on 27 April 1927 conducted at Government House, Adelaide, by Lady Bridges, State Chief Commissioner of Guides and wife of the then—Govemor Of the State.
While set on a course of comparative study of as many practicing Faiths as possible, Bertha met Joe Dobbins, who was on a similar quest. On 3 March 1929, Joe wrote to Bertha, inviting her to go with him and Hilda Gilbert and Robert Brown to meet... “Mr. and Mrs. Dunn at Blackwood” because, he said, “I believe they have the real message; there is no question which they do not answer to one’s satisfaction”. Hilda Gilbert actually was the first to give Joe the Message and he, in turn, gave it to Bertha.
An unusual courtship, spent every Saturday evening at the flat of John Henry and Clara Hyde-Dunn (later to become known affectionately to the Bahá’ís as “Mother” and “Father” Dunn), culminated in Joe and Bertha’s eventual declaration of faith, prior to becoming husband and wife. Since there was no Bahá’í administration at this early stage of the Faith in Australia, exact records were not kept of enrohnents, but letters passing between Bertha and Joe indicated that they had declared shortly after hearing of the Faith. Bertha was editor of Herald of the South in 1929, indicating that she was a Bahá’í in that year. Of this time, Bertha wrote, “The Bahá’í Faith was brought to my notice in 1929 and, after careful study 5f its scriptures, I found the answers to the many things which had puzzled me in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bib1e.”
Her marriage to Joe was recorded by the late Mayzi Almond in Herald of the South dated 13 April 1933, thus:
Bertha Dobbins
On the evening of January 17, 1933, an interesting ceremony took place in the Bahá’í room, Epworth Building, Pirie Street, Adelaide, when our dear Bahá’í sister and brother, Bertha Mochan and J oseph Dobbins, were made one. The ceremony was conducted by the Rev. W.H. Hawke (President of the Council of Churches), Who had heard the Bahá’í Message and was sympathetically and kindly disposed toward it.... After the orthodox service, the Rev. Mr. Hawke read the beautiful Bahá’í Marriage Tablet... Among the many loving gifts was a beautiful crystal vase sent by the Bahá’ís of New Zealand in appreciation of the bride’s work as editor of Herald offhe South.
This particular magazine was actually founded by the 1ate Bertram Dewing, a New Zealand journalist, with the approval of the beloved Guardian, who suggested the title. In some of her notes Bertha wrote:
When Bertram was leaving for a trip abroad, he wrote to me in Australia and asked me to take over the magazine,
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which I was pleased to do.... I edited the magazine for 22 years: first from 19291932, at Which time Miss Dugdale with the help of Miss L. Clark took over for two years; then it came back to me from 19341953. Then I went to the New Hebrides and Mr. Eric Bowes kindly took over.
During the following years, Bertha worked tirelessly as a devoted, generous and selfless wife, and mother of two children; served on the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Australia and New Zealand from 1948—49, as well as for many, many years on her own Local Assembly; travelled to teach the Faith in country towns as well as interstate, particularly in Western Australia and Tasmania and also internationally in New Zealand and Tonga. Her greatest joy was to share enthusiastically and fearlessly her excitement about her discovery of the Message of Baha’u’llah.
Bertha had resigned from the Education Department in South Australia on 11 November 1932, just prior to her marriage. However, when her son was 13 and her daughter 11, she resumed teaching, taking up an appointment at the “Wilderness” girls’ school, Medindie, South Australia, in 1947.
After nearly eight years at the beautiful college, it was time for a new adventure for the intrepid Bertha. Hence, in September 1953, at the age of 58, after consultation with her husband and her children, and in response to a call to the Bahá’í world from the Guardian, she left for the South Pacific, for the group of islands known then as the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), with the purpose of offering the Bahá’í Message to the peoples of those islands. Travelling first by train from Adelaide, she sailed from Sydney on 21 September 1953 on the SS.
Caledonien. Bertha’s notes record those first.
moments on New Hebridean soil:
I arrived in Port Vila on the 17th October, 1953, and said the Greatest Name as my feet touched New Hebridean soil. Miss Gladys Parke and Miss Gretta Lamprill,
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who were also on the Caledonien, en route for their destination, Tahiti, followed, and accompanied me to the Hotel Rossi, Port Vila, where I stayed until the 28th March 1954... On the 29th March 1954, I moved into the hut owned by Chung Yueng brothers, Chinese... and although living facilities were practically nil, I was glad to have a home. Later, this hut acquired an atmosphere of its own. A never-ending line of Visitors, mostly native, came to hear ‘the Story,’ so I called the place Nfir Cottage, and it was here, on the 9th August, 1954, that the Bahá’í school began.
In 1958, the National Spiritual Assembly of Australia was able to arrange for the construction in Port Vila of a substantial structure which had been prefabricated in Australia, and which enabled Bertha to continue her devoted activities at Nfir School.
Following 16 years of separation and personal sacrifice for a Cause they both placed before their own love, the two sweethearts, Joe and Bertha, were parted finally when Joe passed away suddenly in Adelaide on 14 July 1969.
Sad but undaunted, Bertha returned to her school where she remained for another eight years. In December 1971, Nl'lr School was closed at the direction of the Universal House of Justice, due to the cost of its upkeep. However, Bertha remained living at the school, which had become half her residence, half the local Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds. She left the New Hebrides islands only when the task that she had set herself——the formation of the first National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the New Hebrides—had been accomplished in October 1977. She was 82 years old.
In a letter from the Universal House of Justice, dated 4 August 1971, the following tribute was paid to Bertha and her school:
There is no doubt that the Nfir School has been of great service both in providing educational facilities and in contributing to the advancement of the Cause. The
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story of your work with the islanders will forever be enshrined in the annals of the Faith. Praise be to God that you have been enabled to do so much.
Shortly before her return home to Adelaide, Bertha was granted the great bounty and privilege, in April 1973, of being able to accompany the Hand of the Cause of God Collis Featherstone and his wife, Madge, on a Visit to hem and the Holy Land.
Petite in stature, very feminine, an artist of no mean talent (she studied under the famous Australian artist, William Ashton) and a lover of beauty, particularly in nature, Bertha was, at the same time, an indefatigable worker, with a courage and determination born of her positive faith and confidence in her own ability. She was afraid of no one, and, while respecting authority, those bearing that authority were under no misapprehension that the diminutive Bertha was in any way in awe of them! Quite to the contrary, her direct, fearless approach to everyone, from Mayor to Resident Commissioner to College Principal to Head of State, earned for her their respect and deep admiration.
A period of ill—health and increasing frailty on her return home from the New Hebrides culminated in a heart attack on 31 October 1986 and her eventual passing the following Friday, 6 November, at the age of 91.
Dignified and confident to the end, Bertha Dobbins was truly a great lady and a fearless servant of Baha’u’llah.
HELEN REISSENWEBER