The lucky Southlander became $6.3million richer after winning Wednesday’s Powerball and first division prizes with a ticket purchased on the MyLotto website.
While a Lotto spokeswoman said the prize was not yet claimed, many people in the region were celebrating the news yesterday and fantasising about what they would do with the money, if it had been them.
Twenty-one-year-old Jade Hawkes said she would quit her job and travel away.
"I would honestly pack up and leave. Go to Europe, go overseas — experiencing the world. I would do something fun."
Glenda Bell would have a more conservative approach.
"I would invest — to start with — and some of it would sink into my house doing-up.
"And I would also set up a trust to help other people like students to go to university."
Beryl Geiser said she usually only played Lotto on special occasions like holidays or anniversaries but would welcome a jackpot.
"I would sit on it and really think about it. But naturally I would help my own family out, siblings and give some percentage to charity."
The big winner has become the 19th multimillionaire from Powerball this year, coming after a $5.5million prize was won by a Whakatane couple just over a week ago.
While the winner bought the ticket online, many Southlanders went to the Lotto stores in a hope they were the lucky ones.
Collingwood Foodcentre owner Susan Thwaites said her store was busy yesterday.
Her business was among one of the more popular sites in the region to purchase tickets, with many lucky first-division prize-winning tickets sold there in the past.
"A lot of people don’t even realise that it was a MyLotto ticket that won, that it was an online ticket. So they are coming with their physical ticket in a hope that they won."
She believed the local win would cause an increase in the number of people wanting to purchase tickets in the next few days — the local win, plus the proximity of the festive season and the special prizes offered by Lotto between Christmas and New Year would also help boost sales.
Ms Thwaites said another factor that boosts sales is "a lot of people are quite hard-up and they are thinking Lotto might be their get-out-of-jail-free [chance], so it has been very busy".
