A St Albans Park couple who won $25,000 from a $2 scratchy plan share their winnings with neighbours, they have revealed.
The married couple, who wished to remain anonymous, wanted to pay the windfall forward, the wife explained.
“We want to go and buy vouchers for our neighbours and pop it in their mailboxes at night, so they don’t know,” she said.
“I’m not going to write our names on them. We’re just going to do it anonymously, as a little surprise.
“Once I had someone … buy a coffee for me. I was so surprised when I got to the counter, and they told me I didn’t need to pay.
“I do it every now and again, but I want to do that more now.
“It was such a lovely thing for someone to do for me, and it’s the best feeling being able to do that for other people.”
The couple, who bought the scratchy at Bellarine Village Lotto, Newcomb, also plan to fix up their backyard, take their neighbours to dinner and go interstate once COVID-19 restrictions ease.
“It’d be nice to go to Tasmania for a week,” the winning woman said.
“It will be a road trip, because we don’t want to leave our dog at home.”
The couple, who buy a few scratchies each week, then scratch them in their monthly ‘draw’, could not believe their luck.
“This ticket was probably sitting in here for weeks, and we had no idea!” the woman said.
“I scratched the winning ticket and saw the prize, and I thought, ‘no, it can’t be.’ I probably looked at it about ten times, but I couldn’t believe it.
“So I asked my husband to check, and he said, ‘nope, not a winner.’ But then he looked at it again, and he said ‘No, wait…’
“We just stared at each other! We had huge smiles on our faces.
“We don’t have a lot of money, so it will make a world of difference to us. For us, this is like winning a million dollars!”