A NSW woman who has played the same lotto numbers for years was just about to give up on the sequence of digits before she won the $20 million Powerball jackpot on Thursday.
“I thought, ‘I think I’ll keep it for another week. I might be lucky’,” she told The Lott officials.
The sequence of numbers 7, 20, 19, 25, 10, 31 and 1 — as well as the Powerball number 11 — finally proved fortuitous for the Gladstone woman in Powerball draw 1455.
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“It’s got a couple of birthdays in there, but they’re just the same numbers I’ve been playing over and over for a very long time,” she told The Lott.
“I’ve been putting them in each week but recently thought I might completely get rid of it.”
But even after she discovered the win, she didn’t realise at first she was a multimillionaire.
“I got up this morning and checked my ticket. I looked at it and then ran to my family and said, ‘I’ve won $20,000!’,” she said.
“They looked at it and then looked at me and said, ‘No you haven’t. You’ve won $20 million!’.
“I would have been happy with the $20,000 I thought it was.”
When asked what she planned to do with the prize money, she broke down crying “happy tears”.
“You’ve got no idea,” she said of the impact the money would have on the lives of her loved ones.
“I want to get a house, and I’d love to go travelling around the world.
“I keep thinking I’ll wake up and I’ll be back in reality.
“I’m just coming to terms with it.”
She purchased her 14-game entry at Gladstone Newsagency & General Store, where owners Kevin and Robyn McNaught told The Lott officials it was the first multimillion-dollar prize-winning entry they had sold in 17 years running the lottery outlet.
“Robyn and I are excited to know we have played a part in changing someone’s life,” Kevin said.
