Kelly Sherratt has never won a raffle in her life until today, cutting a sweet end to that bad luck as the new owner of a Husqvarna Ride-on mower purchased from Wright’s Motorcycles for the Yass Rotary Raffle.
Drawn today outside Woolworths after the final tickets worth $10,000 in total were sold, Mrs Sherratt was given the good news over the phone, but at first, thought it was a prank call. The Yass Valley Times Editor was on hand to witness the draw and dropped in to see the mower delivered to the delighted prize winner.
“I am still shaking; I had to ask if this was a prank. When I bought the tickets, I said to the lady this morning ‘Give us the last ticket left in the book’, and I said, ‘this might mean something, it might be good luck the last ticket.’ Then I said, ‘It might be good luck to start in the new book too so give me another one,” Mrs Sherrat said from her home in Yass.
Kelly and husband Joe had just done their regular Sunday shop at Woolworths and bought a few extra tickets today, about $45 worth over the past few weeks.
Mrs Sherratt said she’s likely to gift the mower to her son or daughter who both live on acreage.
“Maybe for my son, he’s got a property on Dog Trap Road. He’s been having trouble with his ride-on. He kicked the wheel of his old one just the other day because it wasn’t working.”
Yass Rotarian Mick Newling was among the volunteer ticket sellers and said the raffle was a huge success.
“9 sessions of selling tickets with 2000 odd sold, which gives Yass Rotary a profit of about $6000 we can spend on projects around town in our community or other communities in need. We’re very happy.”
Given the rampant grass and weed growing conditions right now, the Husqvarna Ride-on mower kindly sold to Rotary at below retail by Wright’s Motorcycles proved a popular incentive.
“We’ve sold tickets to people who have never bought tickets, and people have chased us up the car park when we’ve closed up wanting to buy tickets. We’ve sold ten thousand dollars’ worth of tickets, the retail value of the prize was $3900 plus dollars,” advised Mr Newling.
And the profit will go to some good causes.
“We’re spending quite a bit of money at the moment on all of the schools for their awards program. We’ve just dedicated a thousand dollars to a shade sail out at Bowning, and of course, we’ve always got projects on around the world. We give money to the polio eradication program every year, we’ve just given a thousand dollars to that, so this keeps all those things afloat.”
On behalf of Yass Rotary, President Toni Hopkinson thanked everyone who purchased a ticket and advised if there is a needy local cause, Rotary would like to hear about it.
“We’ve just recently donated money to the Rae Burgess Centre and Horton House and other local causes. People can write to Rotary with a request for support. We support other local organisations too like SPIN and Lions Club, and they support us too,” Ms Hopkinson said.
