Canon Walsh was licensed whilst still a deacon as minister of the parish of St Lawrence, in April 1839, following Edmund Dicken who had succeeded Thomas Steele in December 1838.  Priested within the year, Walsh set to work organising his parish which was then meeting for worship in a converted brewery storeroom. When Christ Church was consecrated in 1845, he soon made it one of the most important churches of the diocese. Among his parishioners were some of the poorest people in Sydney, and some of its leading citizens - such as Chief Justice Sir Alfred Stephen and T.S. Mort. Described by his contemporaries as "an old-fashioned, academic High-Churchman", Walsh strove to bring liturgical dignity to the services in ways that, in time, became accepted practice throughout the Anglican Communion. His theology was the Tractarianism of Newman, Keble and Pusey, and in this teaching he was the chief exponent in the Diocese of Sydney, arousing considerable criticism.

Walsh's influence in the diocese declined after the appointment of Evangelical Bishop Frederic Barker, and he returned to England in 1865. In his later years Walsh returned to Australia to live with the family of T.S. Mort on their Bodalla estate, in the role of a domestic chaplain. He died there on December 17,1882.

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