21 July 19

Victoria’s $36.6 million Powerball prize claimed: Macedon Ranges family “fantasising about the future”

Powerball
SNAPSHOT
  • A young Macedon Ranges family has begun “fantasising about the future” after this morning confirming their $36.6 million Powerball win from last Thursday’s draw.
  • There were three division one winning entries nationally in last Thursday’s record-breaking $110 million Powerball draw, draw 1209 on Thursday 18 July 2019 – one each from South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria. Each division one winning entry takes home $36,666,666.67.
  • The Victorian couple was the last of the winning ticketholders from last Thursday’s Powerball draw to claim their prize. The other division one winners were a young Adelaide man and a Sydney couple.
  • As their entry was not registered to a Tatts Card, Tatts had no way of contact the ticketholder and had to wait for them to make contact.

By Matthew Hart

Updated 21 July 2019 - 9:24 am,

first published at 21 July 2019 - 9:24 am

A young Macedon Ranges family has begun “fantasising about the future” after this morning confirming their $36.6 million Powerball win from last Thursday’s draw.

There were three division one winning entries nationally in last Thursday’s record-breaking $110 million Powerball draw, draw 1209 on Thursday 18 July 2019 – one each from South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria. Each division one winning entry takes home $36,666,666.67.

The Victorian couple was the last of the winning ticketholders from last Thursday’s Powerball draw to claim their prize. The other division one winners were a young Adelaide man and a Sydney couple.

As their entry was not registered to a Tatts Card, Tatts had no way of contact the ticketholder and had to wait for them to make contact.

When an official from the Lott confirmed their multi-million-dollar win first thing this morning, the self-described “everyday couple” were initially too stunned to speak before they finally dissolved into hysterical laughter.

“Say it again!” the winning woman asked.

“Umm, yeah! I have no words!” the man added.

“We checked our entry yesterday. We just kept looking at the numbers. I was saying ‘the numbers are not in the same order as the computer’ so I wasn’t sure if the order mattered or not and whether we’d really won,” she said.

“You never know until you get it confirmed!

“It’s funny. We were talking on Friday night and he was talking about what he would do if he won the lottery.

“I said ‘stop planning your life around winning the lottery’. We’re everyday people but I feel we’ve already won the lottery with our family.  We had no idea we’d just won Powerball!”

The happy man shared he usually purchased an entry when the Powerball jackpot started to soar.

“I’ve been playing with the dream that one day I might win division two or something like that. This is just a bit more than that!

“It’s mind-blowing. It’s life-altering. It means I can give my family everything they need. It’s amazing! It really is.”

The couple said celebrations had already begun with a glass of champagne.

“We don’t know what we’re going to do just yet,” she explained.

“We’re just absorbing it. It wasn’t until we spoke to you just now that we’ve gone ‘ok, this is going to happen’.

“We’ve all had conversations with a partner or a mate saying ‘if I won the lottery, I would do this, this and this’. Now it’s actually happened. Now we can talk about it and it means we can actually do what we said we were going to do. We’re fantasising about the future now.

“We’ve always said if we were to ever win we would give some to causes that matter to us. That’s what we’ll do. It’s a little bit of karma.

“Though I probably won’t still believe this is all real until I see it in the bank account.”

The winners, who wish to remain anonymous, purchased their winning entry at Mid-Town Lotto, Shop 3, Gisborne Central Shopping Centre, 10-20 Aitken Street, Gisborne.

Mid-Town Lotto owner John Kelly said he and his team were thrilled the winning ticketholder had been united with their prize.

“The win has created a bit of a buzz around town, that’s for sure,” he said.

“The win has really been well received by everyone. The community seems thrilled someone local won.

“It does give you a good feeling to think someone has won that sort of money. Pity it couldn’t have been me, but we’re all very happy for them and we wish our winner all the very best with their prize.

“We’ve had this store since 2001 and this is the first division one winning entry its sold.  What an entry to sell! We can’t wait to do it again!”

The winning numbers in Powerball draw 1209 drawn on Thursday 18 July 2019 were 6, 13, 1, 11, 23, 27 and 16, while the all-important Powerball is 11.

The Lott’s division one winning tally has now reached 205 so far this calendar year.

In the 12 months to 30 June 2019, 10 Powerball division one winners across Australia pocketed $398,575,649.10 in prize money.  This included one Sydney woman who in January scored a Powerball payday of more than $107 million – Australia’s biggest ever individual lottery prize.