The land

The stately house Toonarbin in West End, Brisbane, was built around the late 1860s or early 1870s for Henry and Mary O’Reilly, originally from Dublin. It stands on Dornoch Terrace, which follows the route of an ancient First Nations pathway that led down from the peak of Highgate Hill through the hunting grounds of the Yuggera and Turrbal people. The location of Toonarbin is just off the map on the left.

The land along the lower end of Dornoch Terrace was surveyed and sold at auction by the NSW government early in 1855. Portion 85, comprising just over 7 acres (2.8 hectares), was purchased by Henry Orlando Chester- Master for £36/2/7, or around $28,000 today using an income value comparison. An ex-army Captain, Chester-Master was one of three brothers from a wealthy English family who emigrated to Australia. His brother Francis settled in Brisbane. Henry purchased property throughout New South Wales and was employed as a Police Magistrate in various towns before returning to England.

In 1862, portion 85 was purchased from Chester-Master by Benjamin Backhouse.

Benjamin Backhouse

Benjamin Backhouse was born in Ipswich, Suffolk, in 1829. He learned the trade of stone and marble mason from his father, also Benjamin, and went into business for himself. In 1852, he, along with his wife Lydia and the first 3 of their 17 children, emigrated to Australia. Their baby Alice died during the voyage, an all too frequent occurrence at the time.

Backhouse worked as a builder and architect in Geelong before returning to England in 1860 for what woud be an unsuccessful attempt at establishing himself as an architect there. The family returned to Australia in 1861, this time settling in Brisbane. In a small community with few architects, he soon developed a successful practice. Some of his surviving works include All Saints Anglican church on Wickham Terrace, Ipswich Grammar School and Fernberg, now Government House. Another of his works lost to fire was the Highgate Hill house Cooltigue, featured in another post on this blog (The Blakeneys of Highgate Hill ).

In 1862, he purchased portion 85 on Dornoch Terrace from Chester-Master, and named it Toonarbin. We don’t know what he paid, but he took out a mortgage of £200, lent by a Robert Johnson back in his hometown of Ipswich. The name Toonarbin comes from the novel The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn written by Henry Kingsley in 1859. Partly set in Australia, two stations, Toonarbin and Baroona, feature in the book. It must have been a favourite of Backhouse as he also designed the house Baroona in Paddington, Brisbane.

Being far from Brisbane and not particularly fertile, the land had not been developed since its original purchase in 1855. In 1865, he had it cleared and fenced.

By 1867, he had developed the property with a garden, dam, stables and a cottage and was seeking a caretaker.

With poor economic conditions in Queensland in the late 1860s, in September 1868 Backhouse decided to relocate to Sydney where he continued his successful career. He put the Toonarbin property up for sale that year.

It was purchased by Mary O’Reilly for £200 a few months later. Her husband Henry O’Reilly, the Brisbane manager of the Australian Steam Navigation Company (ASNC), would have known Backman, as he performed various works for ASNC. These included a wharf extension, warehouse, and the office building pictured below.

For more on the life and work of Benjamin Backhouse, see the detailed paper by John W. East.

The O’Reilly family

The O’Reillys came to Australia in 1853, and Henry was the captain of various coastal steamers before becoming the Brisbane manager of the ASNC.

They had previously built a house called ‘Montpellier’ at Bowen Hills on what was called at the time ‘O’Reilly’s Hill’. This house was later extended and occupied for many years by James Cowlishore, architect, newspaper proprietor, director and politician, and his family.

After selling Montpelier, the O’Reilly’s lived for a while in a cottage in Mary Street where the ASNC offices were later built.

It’s almost certain that Toonarbin had not been built when the O’Reillys bought the property in 1869. The advertisement above makes no mention of a house, and the £200 paid is much too low a price for the land and a substantial dwelling. It’s the amount of the mortgage that Backhouse had taken out on the land, and so with his improvements, it may have been something of a fire sale. Florence Lord, when writing her 1930 article informed by discussion with members of the O’Reilly family, wrote that the O’Reillys had the house built.

When Backman left Brisbane for Sydney in 1868, he handed over his projects to fellow architect John Hall. It’s possible that Backhouse had already designed the house as his family home, but had not started construction before leaving Brisbane. The following call for tenders could refer to Toonarbin. The first Post Office Directory entry for O’Reilly at that location appeared in 1876, placing its construction sometime between 1869 and 1876.

At the time it was built, Toonarbin was very isolated and neighbouring houses only began to appear around 20 years later.

Henry O’Reilly was an amateur astronomer and had an observatory in Felix Street at the rear of his Mary Street offices. A detailed description appeared in a 1874 newspaper article. He wrote numerous letters to the editor on astronomical matters. This is a typical one.

Henry died in February 1875 from the long term effects of an eye injury that was reputedly caused by the ash of a passenger’s pipe during his sea going days.  He is buried in the family grave at the South Brisbane Cemetery at Dutton Park. Mary lived on to 1910.

Charles O’Reilly was Henry’s son. He ran a bonded warehouse, customs agency, and general carrier business in Margaret Street.  There was recently some controversy regarding demolition of this premises. Charles lived in Toonarbin after his marriage to Mary Want in Sydney in 1880 until his death in 1925.

The house had a brush with disaster in 1892, when a fire broke out in an upstairs bathroom. The fire brigade put it out before major damage was inflicted, but there was some damage to rafters supporting the then slate roof.

The property behind the house, known as O’Reilly’s Paddock, was used for community activities. On one occasion in 1912, 500 children from 3 local schools had a picnic there. Following redevelopment in the area, these picnics gravitated to Musgrave Park (see my post  More Tales from Musgrave Park).

The paddock was also a popular location for children to play. A waterhole in the paddock was the scene of tragedy in 1925, when three members of the Gormley family who lived in nearby Mary Street (now Daventry Street), slipped into the water and drowned. They were Francis aged 7, Bernard aged 5 and 3 year old Beryl.

The convent

In 1926, the house and land were purchased by the Catholic Church.

A few months after the purchase, the existing St. Francis’ church building was moved to the site adjacent to Toonarbin from its previous location about 100m away on the other side of Dornoch Terrace.

Toonarbin became a convent of the Sisters of Mercy. The brick outer walls were constructed 1927-1928.

A school was built and opened by Archbishop Duhig on 22 January 1928. The Roman Catholic presbytery at number 59 at the left of Toonarbin was designed by the Brisbane architectural firm of Hall and Prentice and completed in 1928.

In the 1930s, the school had over 250 pupils, but was one of a number of small inner suburban Catholic schools that fell victim to changing demographics, and it closed in 1974.

The Aboriginal and Islander Independent Community School, commonly known as the Murri School, was established in 1986 with just a handful of students. For the first ten years of its existence, the school used the St Francis’ school buildings. The Murri School relocated during 1995, as the site did not meet Workplace Health and Safety standards. It’s now flourishing with around 250 enrolments, and is located at the old Acacia Ridge State School.

In 1912, part of the estate had been subdivided into 68 allotments which all sold for a total of £5,610. Most of the remaining land was subdivided in 1928. Gray Road and River Terrace pass through the original property, which stretched down to the river.

The house was vacated by the Church and remained empty for 12 years until purchased by private owners in 2007. It underwent a high quality restoration which was completed in 2013.

© P. Granville 2018-2026