A newly retired Caboolture couple will spend the next little while planning their future adventures after scoring one of the top prizes of $1,000 a week for five years on an Instant Scratch-Its ticket.
The top prize winning $5 Live the Life was purchased at SG Bakery Café, ShopT16, 17 Murrumba Village, 1613 Anzac Avenue, Kallangur.
Sharing her joy with an official from the Lott this morning, the happy wife recounted the moment she discovered her life-changing win.
“It’s unreal. I still can’t believe it!” she exclaimed.
“Every time I put some lotto on, I grab a $5 scratchie for myself and one for my husband.
“We had to do some babysitting for my daughter, so we decided to scratch them while we were there.
“My husband scratched his and won $20 and we thought that was great.
“I scratched mine and saw the Live the Life symbols but then just carried on scratching.
“Halfway through the next section, I thought ‘hang on, there were three there’, and I double checked it.
“I said to my husband ‘is this right or am I seeing things?’ and he confirmed he saw them too.
“When my daughter got home, we made her check too before we went to claim the prize.
“As I handed the ticket over to collect the prize I said ‘please tell me this is true’ and the girl confirmed it was.
“It’s a good feeling knowing it’s real!”
When asked how she planned to enjoy $1,000 a week for the next five years, the joyful retiree said she was already planning her first getaway.
“My husband and I are newly retired, so this has come at the perfect time for us!” she laughed.
“We are going to use it to travel to Australia and go on plenty of holidays as soon as we can. The world will be our oyster once the borders are open.
“We are itching to get back down to South Australia, so we’ll head there as soon as we can.
“We are very much going to put this win to good use!”
The happy winner also revealed she couldn’t wait to celebrate tonight with her favourite meal.
“The hubby and I are heading out to dinner tonight to celebrate,” she declared.
“Nothing too fancy for us. All I want to do is sit by the beach and eat fish and chips.”
SG Bakery Café manager Janice Gardiner said she was thrilled to hear her outlet had sold it’s first Instant Scratch-Its top prize.
“You beauty! I’m so excited for our customer! I’m jumping for joy!” she exclaimed.
“All of our customers will be excited too and hoping they are our next big win. Having a winner in our outlet will bring excitement to our area and our community.
“We are going to decorate the store with balloons and posters to celebrate our customer’s fantastic win!
“Our customers have won some big prizes at our outlet in the past, including division three, so they always say we are a lucky outlet. This just proves it for them!
“We have a lot of regular customers that return every week so they will be very very excited we have sold a top prize winner.
“All of us at our outlet would like to say a big congratulations to our Instant Scratch-Its top prize winner. We hope you enjoy your celebration with your family and it brings you all the joy in the world and many happy times.”
Between 1 July 2019 and 30 June 2020, there were 151 Instant Scratch-Its top prize winners across the Lott’s jurisdictions who collectively took home more than $11.8 million in top prizes.
During this same time, Instant Scratch-Its players enjoyed more than 29.1 million wins across all prize tiers worth more than $235.25 million. This equates to more than half a million dollars won on Instant Scratch-Its every day.