An Australian family’s life has turned upside down after a $4m lottery win.
Amy Baker was sure her mum Narelle was being scammed when she said she had the winning ticket for the Mater Prize Home lottery.
“I remember like, just falling down to the floor and crying and saying, ‘I can’t believe it’,” Mrs Baker told A Current Affair on Monday night.
“I was in shock, and I started to cry. And I’m saying, ‘Are you serious?’ Like, ‘Is this real, have I really won’?”.
“And they go, ‘Yes, Narelle, you’ve won’.”
The family of five have bought lottery tickets for a number of years but recently made the switch to Mater Prize Home tickets because the profits are used to fund cancer research.
Dad Dean Baker was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2022 and was forced to leave his public service job, putting the family in significant financial stress.
Mrs Baker worked three jobs, including as a teacher’s aide, a Woolworths checkout assistant and a childcare worker to keep the family afloat.
“(I worked) from seven in the morning ’til six at night, working Sundays,” she said.
“(It was) very, very, very tiring for me, very tiring … just to keep our head above the water.”
At the height of their financial troubles, Mr Baker suggested his wife put a pause on buying lottery tickets to help take pressure off the family budget.
Mrs Baker agreed but decided to buy just one more ticket.
Now their life has been turned upside down, with the Bakers deciding to retire eight years ahead of plan and move the entire family interstate.
The family have made the move from their longtime home of Penrith in western Sydney to a waterfront mansion on the sunny Gold Coast.
“We’ve grown up in western Sydney, it’s not all flashy, flashy there,” Amy Baker said.
“Then coming here, we are like, ‘Woah, are we allowed to touch that’?”
The Bakers said their winning ticket wouldn’t be the last one they bought either, and they would continue to support the incredible work of Mater health and research facilities.