George McCulloch (mine owner)

George McCulloch (23 April 1848, in Glasgow – 12 December 1907, in London) was a Scottish businessman and art collector who was the mastermind behind the formation of the Broken Hill Mining Company, a precursor of BHP.

As a young man, circa 1865, McCulloch travelled to Uruguay, South America where his older brothers, John and Allan, were stockmen.

[5] About 1875, his cousin gave him a job as manager of the Mount Gipps Sheep Station in New South Wales,[6] which extended to approximately 400,000 acres of land leased from the government.

[8] A famous story tells how McCulloch played a game of cards with Alfred Cox, a visitor from England, in order to decide the price for one of his one-fourteenth shares in BHP.

He married his housekeeper, Mary Agnes Mayger, the widow of an employee at Mount Gipps, in 1893, and they went to live at 184 Queens Gate, London.