He was the son of James McCulloch, a contractor, and Isabella Robertson, a farmer"s daughter. George"s father died of cholera in January 1849 when George was one year old and he was brought up by his mother assisted by his uncle John Robertson, a farmer.
He was the mastermind behind the formation of the Broken Hill Mining Company, a precursor of BHP Billiton. McCulloch Patterson and Company, shipbuilders, built several vessels including the Isabel, Vale of Doon, Loch Dee, Vale of Nith, Firth of Clyde, Maitland, and the Loch Urr, but they made a small loss on most of these vessels, and the pair were eventually forced to file for bankruptcy in February 1871. The sheep station extended to approximately 400,000 acres of land leased from the government.
By chance, in 1883 one of the boundary riders, Charles Rasp, discovered mineral samples on the property and pegged out a claim.
McCulloch immediately held a meeting with the station hands and it was agreed to form a Syndicate of Seven pegging out a further six blocks of mining leases which were amalgamated to form the privately owned "Broken Hill Mining Company". In 1885 silver was discovered, and in order to bring in more capital for the development of the mine, the original company was floated into the Broken Hill Proprietary Mining Company Limited.
George McCulloch retired to the United Kingdom a rich man about 1891.
Between 1893 and his death in 1907 George became an internationally known art collector and was a patron of the artist John Singer Sargent. At the time of his death he owned one of the finest collections of paintings by modern British artists in the world.
He made it his rule not to acquire a picture unless it was painted in his own lifetime.
George"s widow Agnes married the Scottish painter James Coutts Michie in 1908 and in 1909 the McCulloch Collection of Modern Art was exhibited at the Royal Academy Winter Exhibition at Burlington House. The bulk of the collection was sold by auction in 1913,with many pictures being purchased by Lord Lever. McCulloch"s house at Queens Gate was used as a British Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment hospital during the Great War when it became known as the Michie Hospital.
Foreign her war work McCulloch"s widow Agnes Coutts Michie received the Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1920.
