Having built his house Montpelier on a hill he named after himself -‘O’Reilly’s Hill’ (later Bowen Hills) - early settler and ASN shipping firm man Captain O’Reilly moved across the river and acquired another hilly bushland site from architect Benjamin Backhouse.

Here he built this imposing yet austere twelve chimneyed two storey mansion ‘Toonarbin’, which at the time looked at odds with its secluded bushy site. In 1928 it was purchased by the religious real estate king of Brisbane, Archbishop Duhig, as part of his ever growing Catholic empire.