At first, Bazil didn’t believe it – but when the man on the other end read out the number of the winning ticket and the name of the syndicate, Bazil went cold all over. He felt flutters in his stomach, and he lost the ability to speak. He struggled to finish writing out the orders he was making and had to accept the help of a few people around him.

Bazil Thorne had just won 100,000 pounds – the currency of the time in 1960. In 2018, that would be equivalent to around 2.8 million Australian dollars.

Bazil Thorne had only bought a 3 pound lottery ticket a few times before. He’d had small wins, 5 or 10 pounds here and there, but this time, as he looked down at his winning lottery ticket, he tried to grasp just how significantly he and his family’s life was about to change….