Mick Cullen
Tom (left) and Mick Cullen. Photograph: Lightning Ridge Historical Society.
Michael “Mick” Cullen was an early opal miner at Lightning Ridge. Born in Tamworth, New South Wales in 1871 to Jeremiah and Ellen Mary Slattery, he was the younger brother of Tom Cullen.
Mick was a miner from White Cliffs, who came across to Lightning Ridge prior to 1909 when he held a miner’s right issued from Angledool Court House and applied for a Western Lands property lease in the New Town.
Mick mined for opal with his brother Tom, and also worked alongside author Ion Idriess. Mick is credited with being one of the founders of the Three Mile opal field, along with Archie Gillespie and Darkie Anderson, per John M. Landers. Mick is included in a photograph in Idriess’s Lightning Ridge - The Land of Black Opals (1940), along with Gillespie and others.
Later in his mining career, Mick worked with George Nelson.
Mick Cullen passed away at Uralla, New South Wales, on 11 May 1954, aged 83, and was buried at Walgett Cemetery.
Article: Research by Leisa Carney, edited by Russell Gawthorpe. LRHS research compiled by Len Cram and Barbara Moritz. Sources: Angledool Court House ledgers, LRHS collection, 1909-1910; Walgett Spectator, 16 July 1909, 24 January 1921, 20 May 1936; Lightning Ridge: The Land of Black Opals, Ion L. Idriess, 1940, ch. XIV, XV, XVIII, XXIII, XXV, XXVI; Walgett cemetery and Monumental Inscriptions - Court House Records 1866-1945 & Council Records 1945-1998, H. Allerton, L. Cormie, K. Radford, 1998, p.80.