AUSTRALIA: Half-Million-Dollar Prize

Roll out the barrel

We’ll have a barrel of fun . . .

In Australia almost every day, and sometimes three or four times a day, lottery barrels revolve with the roar of express trains. Flagged to a halt, the barrel is opened, and a distinguished guest with a chromium-plated “extractor” begins withdrawing white-numbered marbles that bring small fortunes to the holders of correspondingly numbered tickets. Even the bored lottery clerks buy tickets, as recently happened in Western Australia when Clerk Neil Watts, writing down the numbers as they were drawn, shouted, “Hey, that’s me!” discovered that he had won a $6,750 jackpot.

Australia’s lottery-barrel polka began 75 years ago when Tattersall’s Racing Club began holding sweepstakes on horse races (the Irish Sweepstakes, say Australians, are a pale copy of “Tatts”), became a national pastime between World Wars, when state governments set up lotteries as a means of raising additional revenue (approximately 40% of the take). This year, riding out a prosperity boom, Australians are expected to buy close to a hundred million lottery tickets (variously priced from 30¢ to $225 each) for an expenditure equal to about $10 for each man, woman and child in the country.

Green Light. Competition for gamblers’ choice is intense between the five (out of six) state governments in the lottery business. Last week Tasmania, smallest state in the Commonwealth, in an effort to outbid rivals, paid out the top lottery prize to date: a whopping $562,500 (tax free, as are all lottery prizes in Australia).

“You gotta be in it to win,” the touts cry. Australians get in it by buying tickets from state lottery offices or, in Queensland, from thousands of small agents, barbers, news dealers, tobacconists, and drugstore clerks, whose “Don’t Pass Your Luck” signs offer curbside service. In Sydney some superstitious ticket buyers write their names upside down on the application forms. Others enter the lottery office only by exits and leave through entrances. Scores wait under the lottery-office clock until the hour strikes before buying a ticket. One regular buyer steadfastly refuses to enter the lottery office until the nearby traffic lights turn green. Australian clergymen who deplore gambling as a “national malady” wage a losing war against the state lotteries; the Roman Catholic Church runs its own lotteries.

The Winning Marble. In Sydney a businessman who gave away $92 worth of lottery tickets as Christmas gifts discovered that one of the tickets had won $27,000. Another $13,500 prizewinner, arrested for drunkenness after celebrating his win, promptly bailed out all his fellow tosspots in the city jail, explaining: “They’re a very nice crowd.” Such incidents are routine for lottery-covering newsmen, but last week all Australia waited breathless while the big Tasmanian barrel roared to a stop and English Cricket Star Alec Bedser reached for the marble that would pay someone more than half a million dollars. In the Sydney slum suburb of Redfern, Mary Milner fell on her knees as she heard the number read out over the radio: it was that of a ticket shared by her husband, a $42-a-week glassworks inspector, the local baker, a manufacturer, a bootmaker, a bookkeeper and a news agent. Said Joe Milner: “It comes sudden.” Said the baker: “Now I’ll put some real dough in my bread.”