Powerball lotto winner from Queensland reveals she almost lost $100 million winning ticket

A woman who won a $100 million lotto jackpot has admitted she almost lost the winning ticket.

The Aspley woman told The Lott that she bought the ticket recently because her birthday was coming up.

“I was shopping the other day, and it’s coming up to my birthday, so I thought ‘Why not?’ and purchased a Powerball ticket.

“The funny thing is too, I almost lost it! I had to pull over on the way home from the shops because I thought I had left it there.

“After that, I put it in my glovebox, and I completely forgot about it until this morning.

“I’m scared to breathe in case this isn’t real. We’re in complete shock.”

The Queensland mum, who bought the winning ticket at Nextra Chermside Newsagency in Brisbane, said she had a feeling she was going to win a major lottery prize at the start of the year.

“At the start of the year, I had a really strange feeling I was going to win a major lottery prize,” she said.

“I told my parents about it, they said, ‘Don’t be crazy’, but I just had this strong feeling.”

She said she only went looking for the winning ticket this morning after hearing news reports that there was a mystery winner in the region.

And she said she was still trying to wrap her head around the size of the win before making any plans on how to spend the money.

“We don’t even know what’s next. We’ve worked so hard our whole lives for everything we’ve had, and we really don’t live a lavish lifestyle,” she said.

“We’d like to do some travelling. Maybe a family holiday somewhere. We’ve always wanted to go see New Zealand and Fiji.

“It’s so weird. I can’t even say it out loud right now!”

The woman is Queensland’s biggest lottery winner and her win is the third-biggest in Australia.

Nextra Chermside Newsagency owner Shannon Hickey claimed the outlet had sold more than $64 million worth of winning lottery tickets before this winning one was revealed.

“It’s just fantastic and means we are the luckiest store in Australia,” he said.

“Congratulations to our winners. We wish them all the very best with their prize.”

Across the country, there were 3,389,212 wins across divisions two to nine, with people winning from a collective prize pool of $67,789,677.20.

The winning numbers were 16, 24, 11, 4, 10, 18 and 23. The all-important Powerball number was 6.