IN Peter Davis's last parish there were ten successive days where the mercury topped 40 degrees Centigrade. He was chaplain to a vineyard, familiar with a multi-cultural city centre and had to watch out for kangaroos and great white sharks.

Kangaroos may not pose the same danger as sabre-toothed sharks, of course, but they can still make an awful mess of your car.

In his new parish, he occupies a parsonage house that was the first in the county to have double glazing - and upstairs heating - where the coal fire blazes in September and from which he can watch the lamp posts bending bizarrely in the wind.

Welcome to Tow Law, Vicar.

Adelaide, from whence he arrived in August, is a thriving, cosmopolitan, sun-bronzed city in South Australia. Tow Law - on a raw-boned ridge in west Durham - is a long and lachrymose place of 2,500 souls where the outback is probably another name for the netty and which, without troubles to seek, found a foot-and-mouth graveyard on its doorstep.

Until the Rev Peter Davis expressed an interest in coming to England and was interviewed by video and by e-mail, it had been without a parish priest for two and a half years.

Innocent abroad? "I can't think why anyone should not want to come here," he says. "The views are astounding." Besides, he adds, it's easier to get warm when you're cold than to cool down when it's 40 degrees in new money.

He is also Vicar of Stanley Hill Top, a former mining community three miles to the east, and of Satley, a more prosperous village to the north. It was to Tow Law, however, that we had rung last Friday to invite ourselves.

"How's England?"

"Dunno," said the Vicar, "I can't see much of it right now."

It was again foggy on Sunday, the wind shrill stirring, the rain happily still abed.

"Please close door to keep in heat," says a notice on the door of St Philip and St James's church, but though the door's closed, the boiler's bust (or some other b-word, not appropriate).

"It does my head in, that boiler. It was all right last night," says Norman Deacon, the admirable churchwarden.

Norman sets the boiler to begin winter in early August. "You can get some cold, nasty days in August," he says, cheerfully.

The organist plays Morning Has Broken, a belief confirmed by the clock, if not by the eastern skyline. The new vicar - "the thing I like about him is that he bends a few of the rules," someone else says - rushes in from Stanley at 9.25am.

He is 50-ish, comfortably built, a member of the monastic Society of the Sacred Mission in a community where long johns, not hair shirt, may more greatly be appropriate.

"G'day," he says, as they do.

The service is the "traditional" form of the new Common Worship order, a reading's from the doleful Book of Amos, a short sermon about the Kingdom of God - "it's here and now, not something you wait for. The faithful must grasp eternity now".

There are prayers for the farming community, for the captured Co Durham journalist, for victims of religious fundamentalism - "Islam or Christian." About 25 people are scattered around a long and striking church.

It's only in the notices that the new man becomes a little disorientated, announcing that there is to be a day trip to Iona and a chance at low tide to walk across to the island.

Since Iona is somewhere off the tip of Mull, it's possible he meant Lindisfarne, both a little nearer to home and a little less demanding of latter day walking on water.

(Over lunch, Peter shows further signs of not having come to terms with English culture, immediately strolling to the bar and getting the beers in. We feel obliged to point out that not only is it unheard of for Church of England clergy to buy a round, but probably breaches at least five of the 39 Articles of Religion.)

The service over in 45 minutes, he heads immediately for Satley in the car that, on arrival, he bought for £500. Satley's a cock stride, he says; in South Australia the churches were 270k apart.

Satley's sunny, a thermometer on the wall of St Cuthbert's showing 70 Fahrenheit. "The boiler only breaks when the Bishop comes," sighs one of the churchwardens. The organist plays I Vow to Thee My Country; 15 are present.

The church is partly 12th Century, two medieval grave covers built into the walls. Many were laid into the floor until an 18th Century incumbent ordered that they be broken up.

Legend has it that the churchwardens grabbed one apiece and ran.

The service is from the Book of Common Prayer, the hymns - Shine Jesus Shine, Give Me Oil In My Lamp - decidedly more modern. The sermon is familiar. At Satley the vicar also has time to chat afterwards, though there will be two more services before his Sunday shift is over.

He plans to stay at least five years, complete his masters degree, see more of merry England.

In the pub he talks about Father Ted, about how much he's enjoying it here, about how he'll enjoy it even more when reunited later this month with Monty, his border collie.

In the parishes they talk also of the agreeable Aussie with a hell of a job on - but already, whether it needs it or not, Tow Law has a breath of fresh air.

Published: 06/10/2001