Brothers Fursey Bodkin, Barnabas Lynch, Joseph Nolan, and their leader, Patrick Ambrose Treacy were Christian Brothers who arrived from Ireland in Melbourne on 15 November 1868 to establish the religious institute in Australia. In 1875 Brother Treacy visited Bishop Patrick Moran, first Catholic Bishop of Dunedin, and promised him a community of Christian Brothers. In 1876 Brother Bodkin was the leader of the new Dunedin community, the first Christian Brothers community in New Zealand. Bodkin, Lynch, Nolan and Treacy Houses date from the 1940s. O'Driscoll and Rice Houses were set up in 2011. Edmund Ignatius Rice was the founder of the Christian Brothers and Brother O'Driscoll was the foundation headmaster of the college. Each year level has six house classes and each house class is the unit of attendance, pastoral care, competitive activity and many daily activities. There are house leaders (students) and house leaders (staff) assigned to each. In 1941 the college won the seventh grade rugby competition. On 21 March 1941 the first annual College swimming championships meeting was held at the Olympic pool, Newmarket. Softball also started early at St Peter's. The college was playing in the softball competitions in 1945. In 1981, St Peter's College won the inaugural national Secondary School's Softball Championship and other national championships in 1990, 1999, 2000, 2002 and 2003. It also won the Auckland Softball Premiership every year from 1994 until 2008, and several times since then. One sport promoted in the early days of the college was boxing. The school boxing championships were held annually, usually at the Municipal Hall, Newmarket.