South Australia’s lotto winning suburban hot spots revealed — explore the interactive map

After so much time in isolation, you’d be forgiven for letting your imagination run wild. Dining out, overseas trips, winning the lotto. For a bit of fun, we reveal SA’s luckiest suburbs to win the lotto. SEE THE MAP.

If ever there was a time to dream about winning the lotto, it surely would be now, during this strange time when social distancing is the norm and “iso” part of our vernacular.

And, if figures released to the Sunday Mail are anything to go by, there are suburban pockets that appear to be luckier than most for a miracle of the financial kind.

This week, for a bit of fun – we know the chance of actually winning is incredibly remote – we look at SA’s suburban lotto-winning hot spots.

While suburbs to Adelaide’s north have proven fruitful places to buy a winning Division 1 ticket over the past five years, a little newsagency in the Adelaide Hills stands out as being particularly charmed.

In the past two-and-a-half years, Mount Barker Central Newsagency has sold five major prize-winning tickets, including windfalls last year of $2,002,612.29 and $1,666,666.67.

Newsagent Rob Staples says he has been thrilled to play a small part in his customers’ good fortune.

“It definitely creates a lot of excitement not just with staff but our other customers – people want to know the story behind the win,” Mr Staples said.

SA Lotteries spokeswoman Bronwyn Spencer says while crunching the numbers provides some lighthearted fodderfor people, it all is a matter of chance.

“While some people are superstitious in deciding where they will purchase their entries from, lotto is a random game of chance,” she said.

Lotteries and Keno’s Matt Hart adds the chances of winning Division 1 vary depending on the game but says with a standard 12-game entry in Saturday X Lotto, the odds are “one in 678,755”.

When it comes to SA regions with the most Division 1 winning entries sold, the northern metropolitan area appears consistently in the No.1 spot.

So far this year there have been three lotto wins in SA worth a million dollars or more and the north’s lucky trend has continued with the tickets bought at Salisbury Plain, Dernacourt and Salisbury Downs.

The most recent was last month when a Salisbury Downs man earned himself a cool $1,982,910 on a work coffee run, after snaring a winning ticket bought at his local OTR outlet.

“I was out and about and thought I’d stop and grab a coffee for myself and my workmate (and) while I was there, I also picked up my ticket,” said the winner, who asked to remain anonymous.

“It’s a big shock to be honest. We have worked hard for everything we’ve got and struggled at times and when a gift like this comes along you think to yourself ‘bloody hell’ – it’s mind blowing.

In 2019, seven SA postcodes boasted two Division 1 wins – Mount Barker, Torrensville, Virginia, Hallet Cove, Smithfield, Modbury and Marleston (online purchases are assigned to this suburb, as the location of SA Lotteries).

There were whopping wins from online purchases last year, including a $40 million win in February – the largest jackpot prize to fall in this state in a decade – and a prize pool worth more than $37 million in July.

The winner of the larger amount, a man in his 50s, told how he picked numbers based on his family members’ birthdates.

In 2018, Smithfield, Blakeview and Craigmore – each with the postcode 5114 – make it into the top lucky suburbs. So too Adelaide CBD and Mount Barker.

But the richest prize in 2018 was a $15 million win from a ticket sold at Kurralta Plaza Newsagency, claimed by a Limestone Coast family who had been playing the same special numbers for more than a decade.

For 2017, the Lotto postcode hot spots where the most number of division one tickets were sold were 5108 (Salisbury North/ Paralowie), followed by 5000 (Adelaide CBD), 5116 (Evanston) and 5290 (Mount Gambier).

In November of 2017 the biggest windfalls of the year were celebrated, with tickets sold at inner suburban Collingswood and regional Orroroo each netting their purchasers $20m.

Good fortune also shone on regional and rural SA in 2016 with significant wins from tickets sold in Millicent, Whyalla, Victora Harbor, Willunga and Woodside.

In 2015, Adelaide’s north was the lotto hotspot, recording 10 Division 1 wins worth more than $9.7 million.