A Lakes Entrance man held one of the six division one winning entries nationally in TattsLotto draw 4073, drawn Saturday, August 1, taking home $889,834.33.
The prize is the 10th major prize to land in the Gippsland area so far this year, and the third division one win in the region in just two weeks.
Sharing his excitement with an official from the Lott on Monday morning, the happy winner confessed he had no idea he was a division one winner.
“Wonderful. Thank you very much. I’m a little bit excited. I’m stumbling around in shock,” he said.
“Yesterday I saw that my local outlet had sold a division one winning entry, but since I hadn’t had a phone call yet, I didn’t think it was me.
“I guess you could call me a regular player. I buy a ticket every week, but I change my numbers every now and again.
“A few months ago, I decided to change my numbers, so I marked my entry with every number from one to 45.
“Which means that I’m guaranteed to get every number at least once on the ticket, but it would just be a matter of getting them in the right order.
“My theory came true in just a few months.”
When asked how he planned to enjoy an $889,000 boost to his bank account, the relaxed retiree said he couldn’t wait to upgrade his car.
“Both my partner and I are retired, so I’m sure we won’t find it hard to find something to do with it,” he said.
“We might upgrade our cars. We enjoy exploring our area so we might upgrade to a 4WD and be more comfortable while we do it.
“We can’t do much to celebrate at the moment with everything going on, but we’ll pop open some bubbly tonight.”
The regular player, who wishes to remain anonymous, purchased his winning 18-game marked entry at Lakes Entrance Newspower.
Lakes Entrance Newspower owners, Kelly Douglass and Jodie Naylor, were thrilled their outlet sold a division one winning entry.
“We have had our outlet for nearly five years, so we are very excited and happy to have finally sold a division one prize.” Ms Douglass said.
“After the year we’ve had with bushfires and COVID-19 it’s nice for our town to have something to celebrate finally.
“We have already decorated the store with balloons and streamers, and we’ve been telling our customers about the win.
“We hope our customers are as happy as we are that we’ve sold a major prize.
“We are very happy for our winner, and we wish him all the best.
“We are thrilled to have finally joined the division one winning outlets club. Hopefully, we can sell many more to our customers.”
IMAGE: Lakes Entrance Newspower’s Kelly Douglass and Jodie Naylor were popping champagne after finding out they sold a division one winning Tattslotto ticket last week.
