David Farrer

David Farrer is a former bishop in the Anglican Church of Australia and currently a vicar in the Church of England

Education

Born in Surrey, England he moved to Australia as a child. After high school he attended a horticultural college in Melbourne, completing his apprenticeship as a horticulturalist before beginning training for the ordained ministry in Adelaide in 1964.

Career

He was ordained a priest in 1969 and served in several parishes, as a canon of St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne, Archdeacon of La Trobe and later Archdeacon of Melbourne and chaplain to the Parliament of Victoria.

His commitment to community work in Australia earned him the title of Citizen of the Year in Brunswick in 1983 "for work with the unemployed and homeless", and Commander of Merit with the Order of St Lazarus in 1994, for launching a street ministry initiative, the Lazarus Centre, in Melbourne.

In 1998 he was ordained to the episcopate and then enthroned as Bishop of Wangaratta at Holy Trinity Cathedral in the Anglican Diocese of Wangaratta, a rural diocese in Victoria. During his time in Wangaratta he helped to establish four low-fee Anglican schools in the diocese.

In 2008 he was appointed vicar of the combined parishes of St Nicholas' Church, Arundel, and St Leonard's Church, South Stoke, West Sussex.

In 2003 he was mentioned in an ABC 7.30 report about the case concerning Father Alan Sapsford. http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2003/s849496.htm