Australia’s biggest lottery winner relives her multi-million-dollar moment
Have you ever wondered what it really feels like to win a multi-million-dollar jackpot?
To give you an idea, we sat down with Australia’s biggest individual lottery winner to discover what was going through her mind in the moments and days after she won a record-breaking $107 million Powerball prize in January 2019.
You can see what she previously shared with us here.
The Sydney nurse has already shared how she’s been enjoying her prize and what it was like to break the news to her family, and now she’s relived the moment she learnt she’d won the record-breaking jackpot.
On the night of the historic draw, when we contacted her, she first thought she’d won $107,000, not $107 million.
“Just like everyone else, I bought my entry before the game, went back to doing what I was doing and totally forgot about it,” she told us.
“It wasn’t on my radar at all because it just doesn’t happen – people like me don’t win and I still don’t think it’s truly sunk in yet!
“To begin with, I was caught up with the rest of Australia. I was just as excited for myself as everyone else was for the winner.
“It was like I could look at myself from the outside and think, ‘Wow, that’s so exciting, I wonder what she’s going to do with it?’.
“I still remember watching the story unfold on national television. It was exciting to read about it and see that so many people were happy for me.
“I appreciated the well wishes and excitement that was coming from the entire country.”
The New South Wales mum in her 40s is still working and explained her life didn’t change drastically overnight.
“I got up the next morning and took the kids to school and had jobs to do and commitments I had to follow through with,” she said.
“People needed me to be the person I always was.
“I suppose you get to a certain age, and you’re already the person you are, and you’re set in a certain way. When you’ve had these certain habits your whole life, you don’t just change them overnight, or at least I chose not to.”
Like so many people across the country, the hardworking and humble nurse said she’d always dreamt of one day winning the lottery.
“When I used to hear about people winning the lottery, my husband and I would always feel so happy for them!” she recalled.
“We’d always say ‘could you imagine!’. Just one million dollars would be lovely!
“I always used to tell to people at the hospital to go buy a lottery ticket if they were feeling down, explaining to them that it gives you some optimism that maybe in the morning you’ll wake up and everything has changed, it’s something to hold onto.
“And that’s exactly what happened to me!”