Australian man wins Pacific island resort with $49 raffle ticket

The man, identified only as Joshua from New South Wales, won the 16-room Micronesian resort in a draw organised by the Australian owners, who were looking to handover the lodge after setting it up two decades ago.

Ahead of the draw, co-owner Doug Beitz said he was hoping the winner would be “someone who likes warm weather, likes meeting new people from around the world, is adventurous”.

A video posted on Facebook revealed the winning number, drawn on Tuesday evening by a computer, to be ticket 44,980.

But Beitz’s efforts to reach the new owner by phone and inform him of his life-changing win were not immediately successful.

He eventually tracked the lucky winner down and gave him the good news.

“His name is Joshua and he’s from Australia,” Beitz said, adding that he lived in New South Wales.

The man’s full identity was not immediately revealed until news of winning the Kosrae Nautilus Resort on the Micronesian island of Kosrae, which lies west of Hawaii and north of the Solomon Islands, had sunk in.

Read more at The Guardian