Lotto winners from Hamilton mow the lawns after taking home $13 million

A Hamilton family who became Lotto multimillionaires on Saturday, jumped straight back into "normal life" after founding out they'd won, by mowing the lawns. Photo: Andrew Warner / Bay of Plenty Times

A Hamilton family who became Lotto multimillionaires on Saturday, jumped straight back into "normal life" after finding out they'd won, by mowing the lawns.

"The overwhelming feeling is disbelief. I kept saying I don't think I'll believe it until I see it in our bank," said the winner, who wishes to remain anonymous.

"We bought the ticket online on Saturday afternoon and were actually joking with friends over dinner that we were going to win Lotto that night."

They tried to check their ticket before going to bed but the website was overloaded.

"We'd watched the news that night about the likelihood of winning and I said 'well, we've got more chance of getting struck by lightning twice than of winning Powerball anyway.

"Then we thought if we go to bed without checking our ticket, at least we've got one
more night of imagining that it might be us that won," laughed the winner's husband.

It wasn't until the winners logged into their MyLotto account early on Sunday morning that they started to suspect they might actually have won.

"We logged into MyLotto and a screen flashed up saying 'Congratulations, you have won $13.3 million'. But we just couldn't believe it! We were thinking maybe it was a promotion or something.

"So we phoned up my sister and she said 'you better have a good reason for waking me up this early', which I think we did!"

She confirmed she didn't have a winning message, which is when it began to click into place for the winners.

They thought "yes - we really have just won a life-changing amount of money."

The winners had bacon, eggs and champagne for breakfast to celebrate.

"After breakfast we just got straight back into normal life - mowing the lawns and tidying the house. We didn't feel like millionaires."

While the win still feels "ridiculous", the winners are slowly coming around to the realisation that this is real.

"There are just so many figures in our bank account now. I keep logging online to look at it - we keep pinching ourselves.

"Things that you never thought would be possible, we can now actually do. I keep waking up in the night and just giggling to myself thinking about it."

The winners said the $13.3m was enough to set them up for life, with plenty to share round as well.