Reading a story in her local newspaper about a local TattsLotto win has prompted a Castlemaine woman to check her ticket and realise she’s the region’s division one winner.
The woman held one of the eight division one winning entries in TattsLotto draw 3857, drawn Saturday 7 July 2018. Each entry took home a division one prize of $503,668.42.
Despite her entry being registered to a Tatts Card, Tatts officials had been unable to make contact with the winner.
But speaking to a Tatts official this morning, the woman explained how she came to discover her dream-come-true news a week after the winning numbers were drawn.
“I saw I had some missed calls on my phone last week but thought it was a scam,” she laughed.
“But on Saturday I was reading the local paper and it had something in there about a TattsLotto winner in Castlemaine that hadn’t come forward yet. I thought ‘that’s weird, oh well’, but I thought I should go and check my ticket.
“I used the Lott app to scan my ticket and it came up with a message saying I’d won a big prize. I thought ‘oh that’s nice, maybe I’ve won $5,000 or something’, not more than half-a-million dollars!
“It’s pretty awesome!”
The Castlemaine resident plans to share her TattsLotto windfall with those at the top of her Lotto List – her family.
“This is going to set us up for the future,” she said.
“We’ll also buy a new car and enjoy an overseas holiday.
“I still don’t think it’s sunk in. We’re sort of slowly getting our heads around it. It’s just amazing.”
The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, purchased her winning 12-game marked entry at Castlemaine Newsagency, Shop 1, 45 Mostyn Street, Castlemaine.
Castlemaine Newsagency owner James O’Brien said he was thrilled to have sold another division one winning entry.
“It’s always exciting to sell a division one winning entry and help change someone’s life,” he said.
“Winning that amount of money would be a life-changing experience for anyone which is great for a small country town.
“We’ve sold 27 division one winning entries from this store over the years and since taking over ownership of the store nearly 20 years ago, we’ve sold ten.
“The last one was in May 2016, so we were due for another one and we are really pleased someone has won it.”
So far this calendar year, Monday & Wednesday Lotto and TattsLotto have created 99 millionaires across Australia.
The six winning numbers in TattsLotto draw 3857 on Saturday 7 July 2018 were 29, 1, 6, 43, 23 and 18. The supplementary numbers were 3 and 35.
Across Australia there were eight division one winning entries in TattsLotto draw 3857 – five from Victoria and one each from New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia.
The Lott’s division one winning tally has now reached 214 so far this calendar year, including 91 won by Tatts customers.
Last financial year, there were 290 division one winning TattsLotto entries across the Lott’s jurisdictions, which collectively won more than $341.27 million.