Margaret and David Walker are ecstatic about winning a city apartment, and show off their winning ticket and bottle of champagne they were given on viewing the apartment.By Sarah Schwager
DANDENONG North’s Margaret Walker proved good deeds are rewarded when she won a Docklands apartment last Wednesday.
Mrs Walker said she had never had a lucky streak when it came to raffles, but she decided to buy a $100 ticket in the Royal Melbourne Hospital Home Lottery anyway, as it was for a good cause.
Her name was drawn second, winning her the apartment, two Telstra Dome Gold Medallion Tickets and a Mercedes-Benz fortwo Smart car – worth a total of $652,000.
“It’s a bit much to take in. We’re very blessed,” she said.
The hospital’s home lottery was the first to be conducted in Victoria, and was inspired by a Canadian initiative, with the funds to be used to purchase expensive, groundbreaking medical equipment.
Mrs Walker had been seeing an oncologist at Melbourne Private on a weekly basis when she heard about the raffle and told her husband, David Walker.
With a one-in-20 chance of winning a prize, and with more than 4000 prizes up for grabs, she thought she had fairly good odds, but never expected to come second.
Mrs Walker said her children, who are grown up, were very excited about the win as well, and expected to use the apartment on occasional weekends.
She said the one-bedroom apartment was amazing, but too small to live in, so they would use it for weekends and holidays.
“There’s nowhere to put a veggie patch,” she said.
She said the apartment was fully furnished, even with cutlery.
“We just laughed when we saw it. You could walk right in.
“It’s funny, because we both like to go down to the Docklands for lunch for the day. Now we can just walk out our front door and we’re there. It’s wonderful.”
Mrs Walker said they both loved being in the city, and the advantage now was that they would never have to find anywhere to park.
“It opens up so many possibilities. We’re just a hop, skip and a jump from Telstra Dome and it’s just a walk over the walkway to the city.”
She said they would make full use of the Telstra Dome tickets, but they plan to sell the Mercedes-Benz and their current car to buy a more modest car.
Mrs Walker is not employed, because of health reasons, but her husband works full-time. She said the prizes would be a big boost to the couple’s retirement plan. They are both in their mid-fifties.
The first prize in the lottery was a four-bedroom house in Hawthorn East, which was won by Peter Jurczyluk, from Sunbury, and a special ‘early bird’ prize, drawn in late November, was a Porsche 911 Carrera, which was won by an 18-year-old Taylors Lakes student.
Other prizes included home-entertainment equipment, personal music players, holidays, cars and sport and leisure equipment.
Royal Melbourne Hospital’s foundation executive director, David Jones, said the prizes were not donated, but supplied at a substantial discount.
He said the hospital had made a $1.5 million profit.
“We are not looking to use it to replace hospital beds, we are looking to use it to get the best specialist equipment money can buy,” Mr Jones said.
