Melbourne Family Wins Sunshine Coast Holiday Home

For Prize Home winner Kathy and her husband, the most precious thing about their new $1.2 million holiday home will be the memories their family will create there.

The Melbourne couple, both in their 60s, can’t wait to share their spectacular waterfront home at Birtinya on the Sunshine Coast with their four grown-up children and grandkids.

And after a challenging year, the good news couldn’t have come at a better time.

“My daughter was diagnosed with stage four cancer this year and she has spent so much time in hospital and had very, very serious surgery so it’s been a pretty terrible year and to have this has been fabulous. She has two children, and she is dying to get up there and take the kids up for a holiday,” Kathy said.

“My younger son is also getting married in January and was going to go to Bali for his honeymoon, which they can’t do now, so we’ve offered the house for their honeymoon.”

With the whole family lining up to visit, the luxuriously furnished home, which is just five minutes from the beach, will become the ultimate holiday destination.

“We’ll keep it for a year or two and just have it as a family escape,” Kathy said.

“After the year that we’ve had, everyone is looking forward to getting up there and having a bit of quality family time and getting away from the dramas that have been going on down here this year.

“It will give everybody a bit of a break and somewhere to go to have a really nice holiday without it costing us an arm and a leg.”

Not knowing the Sunshine Coast region at all, travelling to their new holiday home will be an exciting adventure for Kathy and her family.

“I think we’ve only been to Queensland two or three times, and I don’t think we’ve ever been to the Sunshine Coast,” Kathy said.

“We’ve got some friends that live up on the Gold Coast, but we haven’t been up around that way for many, many years so it will be lovely to come up there.”

“We actually just bought a caravan, thinking we’d do a bit of travelling around. So now we’re thinking we can load the caravan and the two dogs, take three or four days to come up, park the caravan in the driveway and stay there for three or four weeks and then mosey on back home again.”

With dreams to one day migrate north to the Sunshine State, their new base overlooking Lake Kawana will give Kathy and her husband a chance to test the waters and explore the region before they take the plunge.

“We were ideally looking at moving up to Queensland in a few years’ time, hopefully on the water, so this will give us a little bit of a taste of it before we have to make a decision and give us a chance to try the area,” Kathy said.

Wherever they decide to settle, their million-dollar-plus win has enabled Kathy to imagine what’s possible and ensures that, financially, their future is looking bright.

“We’ve still got a fairly reasonable-sized mortgage, so we always thought that we’d never own the home we live in now, and we’d never have the money to own a nice home when we actually retire.

“But this has changed everything for us moving forward – it’s lovely,” she said laughing.

“It has opened a lot of doors for us that we weren’t expecting to have.”

Kathy was on her own working remotely from home when she received the life-changing call from Endeavour to tell her that she had won.

“It was a very pleasant surprise!” she said of her $1.2 million Prize Home win.

“The first thing I did was ring my husband at the office.”

After making sure he was sitting down, Kathy broke the incredible news that she had won.

“He was a bit shell-shocked when I told him,” she laughed.

“We popped a bottle of bubbly that night to celebrate,” Kathy added.

While their lives have indisputably changed forever, there’s one thing that will stay the same.

“I’ve continued on with my subscription with Endeavour Foundation because you buy the tickets for a reason,” Kathy said.

“A lot of people have said to me that you don’t need to keep buying tickets now that you’ve won the house and I said, ‘We’ll no, I don’t, but that’s not the reason behind buying lottery tickets.’”

As a long-term Star Supporter with Endeavour Foundation, Kathy understands the value of her on-going support.

“Endeavour Foundation does a really good job supporting people with intellectual disability. You get some really nice stories about how you’ve helped different people, and I just think it’s a really great cause.”

For Kathy it’s a win/win, especially now that she’s been rewarded with a truly special holiday home that will soon be filled with love, laughter, and treasured memories.

“Everyone is looking forward to getting up there and having a bit of quality family time. We can’t wait.”

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