THREE Lake Macquarie women will split $2 million after discovering they won the huge prize in a lottery draw more than a month ago.
Lottery officials confirmed the private syndicate had one of 10 winning entries in an October 31 draw.
With their ticket unregistered, officials had no choice but to wait until the trio discovered the good news for themselves. The syndicate leader had been on holiday, leaving the ticket at home.
"I always buy our entries four weeks at a time, and so I left it in a drawer at home while I was on holiday and only remembered to check it today after getting back a few days ago," she said on Thursday.
"There are three of us that have been playing this ticket for about three years.
"We keep all of our winnings in a little kitty and always use it to buy our annual Christmas lunch. This year we've only got about $35 so far, but I think now we'll have to upgrade our plans and have a nicer lunch."
The woman said she would invite the other two winners to dinner and share the news so they could celebrate together.
She said her plan was to retire immediately with her share.
"Well, I wasn't really looking forward to going back to work tomorrow, but I don't think I have to now," she laughed.
"I was planning on retiring in a year anyway, but this has just brought it forward.
"I think another one of my friends will retire too, and the other will probably collapse in excitement as she won't have to work overtime anymore.
"My current car has over 400,000 kilometres on it, so I think it's time for it to retire too. We'll retire together."
Nextra Glendale owner Michelle Nash, whose store sold the lucrative ticket, said she was thrilled that the syndicate had eventually realised their good fortune.
"We've had customers asking us every day if we have found our winner and so now we are happy to say we have," she said.
"It's wonderful it has gone to regular customers and locals to the area. We wish our winners all the best."
The draw's winning numbers were 19, 4, 26, 27, 34, and 13, while the supplementary numbers were 6 and 15. Four of the 10 winning tickets were from NSW.
In the 11 years from July 1 2019 to June 30 this year there were 318 division one winners in Saturday Lotto.
