Talk about a barman’s holiday – a barman who dropped into another bar on his day off has walked out $1.2 million richer, a lottery company says.
Thanks to a $1.2 million Keno jackpot, a 62 year-old Moruya man is now looking forward to a bigger-than-Ben-Hur wedding and starting married life in a mortgage-free home.
The elated winner, who wants to keep his identity under wraps, was still shaken after buying the winning Keno ticket at Moruya Bowling Club on Thursday afternoon, where he took his fiancé for a lunch date on his day off work.
“I’m still shaking,” the winner said on July 6, 2017.
“I’m a little blown away.”
“I just took my partner to lunch and bought a ticket. She still can’t believe it, the same as me.
“I didn’t realise [I’d won] until I went to check my ticket on the way out.
“When they told me, I nearly passed out.”
Keno and Moruya’s newest millionaire, whose partner died some years ago, said he now planned to pay off the mortgage on their home and get married in more style than he ever could have imagined, but retirement wasn’t on the cards.
“We have all the wedding organised but this is going to put the trimmings on it.
“I think we’re going to Airlie Beach, North Queensland for our honeymoon.
“I’m not going to retire; I’ve got to keep active.
I’m at my work having a little celebratory gathering right now,” he said.
The winner said he had been playing the same numbers “for 20 odd years”, a few times week.
“One of my mates who died of cancer, he won about $147,000 a few years back, and he said to me ‘keep sticking with your numbers and eventually they’ll come up’.
“He was right about that.”
The winning numbers were 2, 5, 6, 7, 17, 19, 26, 27, 55, and 57.
The $1,248,849 cash prize is the third $1 million-plus Keno jackpot to be won in just one week.
A 52-year-old electrician from Caringbah, south of Sydney, won just over $1 million when he stopped in after work to buy a Keno ticket at Wests Nelson Bay Diggers Club.
The other was won by a 49-year-old service station manager who picked up $1.2 million with the first ever Keno ticket she purchased from ACT online.
Keno spokesperson David Dicker congratulated Keno’s seventh New South Wales million-plus jackpot winner for 2017, saying the team was thrilled that such a longtime Keno player had been rewarded with a major jackpot.
