[4] In 1975 he was appointed Principal of St Andrew's Hall a Church Mission Society missionary training college in Melbourne.
On his way to Britain for the 1988 Lambeth Conference he undertook a highly secretive detour to Iran in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to secure the release of Terry Waite, the personal envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and several other western hostages.
[citation needed] On 24 July 1989, after returning home from the Tokyo World Conference on Religion and Peace and the Lausanne Evangelical Congress in Manila, where he delivered a series of Bible studies, he suffered a severe heart attack.
He was kept on life-support in Melbourne's St Vincent's hospital, but although he regained consciousness, he died on 1 October 1989.
His state funeral service was held at St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne on 6 October 1989.